“Oh, yes, do, please,” Dora had said, when she was told this. “If my mother is poor, Miss Skimmers--and I suppose from what you say, she must be--I don’t want to be a drag on her, and I should like very much to do something to help pay for my education. But what is my mother? You see, I was such a little thing when I first came here that I don’t remember living anywhere else or belonging to any one else, and I thought--oh, Miss Skimmers, I didn’t know until this minute that I belonged to anybody or had a single relation in the world. But a mother! How delightful! Have I a father, too?” “No; I was told that your mother was a widow when you were brought to me; a widow in good circumstances was how the man--he claimed to be her solicitor--who brought you here put it, and I was not undeceived until a year later, when she wrote me to the contrary, and said that, when you were old enough, she desired you to do something toward reducing the expenses of your education.” Casting back her memory, when she heard this, Dora could readily guess when that time was; for she had a distinct recollection of coming suddenly--and for some reason unexplained at the time--down from the giddy eminence of “show pupil,” who was trotted out to be exhibited whenever a possible new client made his or her appearance, to the undignified position of something that ought to be--and was--kept in the background and translated from the splendors of a bedroom on the first floor to one that had broken furniture and discolored walls and nothing but a thin layer of leaky slates between it and heaven. She had suffered in that upper-story bedroom--suffered agonies of heat in summer and tortures of cold in winter, and the dread of scurrying plaster-disturbing rats at all seasons, whether hot or cold--but it all sank into insignificance now before the glory of having a mother. “Who is my mother?” she asked of Miss Skimmers, in the gladness of her heart and the joy of finding that she possessed such a glorious thing. “Where is she? What is she? Oh, tell me, please.” “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Miss Skimmers answered, as she shrugged her shoulders and walked away. “All my dealings with her have been through a third party. But she is evidently not a person of my class or the class and standing of my other patrons.” And considering that Miss Skimmers’ parents had been in the green-grocer line, and that her pupils were the daughters of successful drapers, butchers, milliners, and publicans, Dora was rather glad to hear it.