“Yes, it is; and very uncommon shabby of her I call it, too--sending for you like this, and not giving me time to fill your place. Here’s her letter, if you want to see it. She’s stopping at a place called Minorca Villa, in Crumplesea, on the Kentish coast, and she writes that you’re to go to her there at once, and not to delay a moment in starting. And here’s a five-pound note she inclosed for you to get a new frock and to pay your railway ticket, and here’s a card, too, with the address on it, ‘Minorca Villa, Nightingale Road, Crumplesea, Kent.’” Dora took both the letter and the card, read each--in a state of blissful excitement--and then took possession of the five-pound note. “To think of my mother being a really existing person!” she said, with a happy little laugh. “Oh, Miss Skimmers, I can scarcely believe it. I shall go at once, at once.” She was as good as her word. Within the space of half an hour, she had packed her small belongings into a shabby valise--a relic of her “first-floor” days--sent them over to the railway station by a housemaid, said good-by to the house cat, her only friend and companion in the dreary days she was leaving behind her, and had shaken the dust of the Skimmers’ establishment from her feet forever. The day no longer seemed hot and suffocating, and the sun no longer hurt her eyes as she walked down the dusty, glaring, treeless road to the railway station--she was going to her mother, that poor, sorely tried, wonderful mother, who was an existent, after all, and whose poverty had kept them so long apart. For by some strange process of reasoning which was not compatible with the facts of the case, she had arrived at the conclusion that poverty was the sole explanation of her mother’s long neglect of her. “Poor little mother!” she thought, as she hurried out; “it took all she could spare to pay for my education, of course, and she could not afford to waste money in coming to see me. What a dear she is to have done so much! But never mind, I’ll make it all up to you, and there will be two now to fight the battle, and as the proverb says, ‘Many hands make light work.’ I can teach music, and no end of things, and--you’ll see!--it won’t be long before I find pupils and am in a position to give you a nice little home and at least some of the comforts a lady should have.” For, of course, her mother was a lady; there could be no possible doubt of that, considering that in the old days she had had her affairs attended to by a family solicitor and was spoken of as a person of considerable importance--a lady in reduced circumstances, it is true, but still a lady. In her mind’s eye, Dora could almost see her already--a sweet-faced, sweet-voiced motherly old lady with gray hair and mild eyes; a dear, soft-treading, soft-speaking, gentle old darling, with a tiny white cap on her head and such beautiful shapely old hands.