“I haven’t any money to give ’cause I’m one of the little girls at the Home. Some of them have relations to send them things sometimes; but I haven’t. I have two Bibles; but I wouldn’t give this to any one but the heathen ’cause my own mamma gave it to me. It’s nice to have a mamma to cuddle you up and love you just by your own self, and tuck you into bed at night, and not have to be in a row all the time. It makes a lump all swell up in my throat when I think of it, and my eyes get so hot and wet I can hardly see. I wish God did have homes enough, so He could give every little boy and girl a real one, and we needn’t be all crowded up in one big place, that’s just called so. Sometimes, when I see all the houses it ’most seems as if there must be enough to go ’round; but I suppose there isn’t. I guess it’ll be the real kind we’ll have up in heaven, and I want to go there; and that’s why I send you this Bible, so you can learn about it. You must read it and be good. Oh, dear! it’s dreadfully hard to be good when you haven’t any mamma. I hope you’ve got one, if she is a heathen, for I’m most sure that’s better than no kind. Good-bye. “Rue Lindsay.” “Poor little thing!” exclaimed the lady, half laughing, but with a sudden moisture in her brown eyes. Captain Grey looked around the beautiful room. “I’m inclined to believe that letter was properly directed, and has reached its rightful destination,” he said, thoughtfully. “Think of it, Mary—all these cosy, pretty rooms, and no one to occupy them but you and me, while there are so many little home-sick souls in the world! You have spoken of it before; but I was too selfishly contented to care about it. If I’m not ‘the greatest heathen’ I have certainly been far enough from the sort of Christianity this book requires.” “Well?” questioned Mrs. Grey, with shining eyes, waiting for the conclusion of the matter. “Shall I go to-morrow and bring this little midget home with me—for a visit, say—and see what will come of it?” It did not occur to little Rue that the stranger she met in the hall the next day, and who had a long interview with the matron, could be of any possible interest to her small self, until she was summoned down stairs to see him. “Would you like to go home with this gentleman, for a visit of a week or two, Rue? He has come to ask you,” said the matron. “Me?” questioned Rue, oblivious of grammar lessons, and with a dozen exclamation points in her voice. There was no danger of her declining. The prospect of a visit anywhere was delightful, and the possibility of such a thing almost as wonderful as a fairy tale. So it was a very bright little face that Captain Grey found beside him in the carriage, and Rue looked up at him shyly through her rings of sunny hair, to ask, as the only imaginable solution of the happy problem: “Are you one of my relations?”