She refrained from comment on this remark, falling into reflection, leaning back, with one hand outstretched, on the grass. The game went on vociferously, the shrill lithe voices piercing the silence of the summer afternoon. Mr. Bentley's eyes continued to rest on her. "Tell me," he inquired, after a while, "are you not Alison Parr?" She glanced up at him, startled. "Yes." "I thought so, although I have not seen you since you were a little girl. I knew your mother very well indeed, but it is too much to expect you to remember me, after all this time. No doubt you have forgotten my name. I am Mr. Bentley." "Mr. Bentley!" she cried, sitting upright and gazing at him. "How stupid of me not to have known you! You couldn't have been any one else." It was the old gentleman's turn to start. She rose impulsively and sat down on the bench beside him, and his hand trembled as he laid it in hers. "Yes, my dear, I am still alive. But surely you cannot remember me, Alison?" The old look of almost stubborn honesty he recalled in the child came into her eyes. "I do--and I don't," she said, perplexed. "It seemed to me as if I ought to have recognized you when I came up, and yet I hadn't the slightest notion who you were. I knew you were somebody." He shook his head, but did not speak. "But you have always been a fact in my existence--that is what I want to say," she went on. "It must be possible to remember a person and not recognize him, that is what I feel. I can remember you coming to our house in Ransome Street, and how I looked forward to your visits. And you used to have little candy beans in your pockets," she cried. "Have you now?" His eyes were a little dimmed as he reached, smilingly, into the skirts of a somewhat shiny but scrupulously brushed coat and produced a brightly colored handful. She took one, and put it in her mouth: "Oh," she said, "how good they were--Isn't it strange how a taste brings back events? I can remember it all as if it were yesterday, and how I used to sit on your knee, and mother would tell me not to bother you." "And now--you are grown," he said. "Something more than grown," she smiled. "I was thirty-one in May. Tell me," she asked, choosing another of the beans which he still absently held, "do you get them for these?" And she nodded toward the Dalton Street waifs. "Yes," he said, "they are children, too."