"It is my mother's, but how came it here?" she thought, as she took it into the kitchen where she heard Mrs. Biggs at her work. "Where did you get my mother's cloak?" she asked. Mrs. Biggs, who always washed on Saturdays, had just put Tim's shirt through the wringer. Holding it at arm's length with one hand and steadying herself on the side of the tub with the other, she stared blankly at Eloise for a moment, and then said, "Your mother's cloak! Child alive, that's Mrs. Amy's. I've seen her wear it a hundred times when she was a little girl. She has got on a spell of givin' this mornin', and sent it to you by Sarah. She's kep' it well all these years. What ails you?" she continued, as Eloise's face grew as white as the clothes in Mrs. Biggs's basket. Ray after ray of light was penetrating her mind, making her wonder she had not seen it before, and bringing a possibility which made her brain reel for a moment. "Sit down," Mrs. Biggs continued, "and tell me why you think this is your mother's cloak." "I know it is," Eloise answered. "I have worn it so many times, and once I tore a long rent in the lining and mother darned it. It is here,--see!" She showed the place in the silk lining where a tear had been and was mended. "For the Lord's sake, who be you?" Mrs. Biggs exclaimed, still flourishing Tim's shirt, which she finally dropped back into the tub, and in her excitement came near sitting down in a pail of bluing water instead of a chair. "I am Eloise Albertina Smith, and my father was Homer Smith, and my mother was Eudora Harris from Florida, and sang in concerts, and lost her mind, and was in a private asylum in San Francisco, and my father died, and a strange man took her out a few months ago. I did not know where she was, and was going to California to find her. I believe your Mrs. Amy is she, and I am going to the Crompton House to inquire!" "For Heaven's sake!" was Mrs. Biggs's next ejaculation. "Harris was Amy's name before she was called Crompton, and her name is Amy Eudora, too; but I never heard she had a girl." "Yes, she had, and I am that girl," Eloise said, "and I am going up there now, right off!" "You can't walk," Mrs. Biggs suggested. "That ankle would turn before you got half way there. If you must go,--and I believe I would,--Tim will git a rig from the livery. Here, Tim," she called, as she heard him whistling in the woodshed, "run to Miller's and git a carriage and a span, quick as you can,--a good one, too," she added, as the possibility grew upon her that Eloise might belong to the Cromptons, and if so, ought to go up in style. It did not take long for Tim to execute his mother's order, and the best turn-out from Miller's stable soon stood before the door. "I b'lieve I'll go, too. The washin' will keep, and this won't," the widow said, beginning to change her work-dress for a better one.