Leaving her companions she went to the tall, peculiar looking woman sitting so straight and stiff upon the bench, and laying her soft white hands on her knee, looked curiously and fearlessly into her face, with the remark: "I am Bessie, not Betsey. I think that is a horrid name."
And so the conversation commenced between the strange pair, and Bessie told of the stingy aunt in America for whom she was named, and who had never sent her a thing, and whom her mamma called "Old Sauerkraut." Bessie was very communicative, and Miss McPherson learned in a few minutes more of the Bohemian life and habits of her nephew and his wife than she had learned at her brother's house in London, where she had been staying for a few weeks, and where Mistress Daisy was not held in very high esteem. And all the time she talked, Bessie's little hands were busy with the folds of the black dress on the woman's knee, rubbing and smoothing it with the restlessness of an active, nervous child. But Miss McPherson would hardly have minded if the hands had worn holes in her dress, so interested was she in the little creature talking to her so freely.
"Would you like to go and live with me?" she asked at last. "You shall go to school with children of your own age, and have all you want to eat, good bread and milk, and muffins and sirup, and--"
"Cheux fleur au gratin? Can I have that? I liked that best of all the day I went to table d'hote in Paris with mamma," Bessie interrupted, and Miss McPherson replied: "No, but you can have huckleberry pie in summer, and a sled in winter, to ride down hill."
At the mention of the sled Bessie opened her eyes wide, and after a moment's reflection, asked: "Can papa go, too?"
"Yes, if he will," came hesitatingly from Miss McPherson, and the child continued: "And mamma?"
"No, Heaven forbid!" was the response, spoken so decidedly that the restless hands were motionless, and into the blue eyes and about the sweet mouth there stole the troubled, half-grieved expression, which in after years became habitual to them.
"Don't you like my mamma?" the child said. "She is very nice and pretty, and Lord Hardy likes her, and so does papa, for he kisses her sometimes. Papa would not go without mamma, and I must not leave papa, so you see I cannot go, though I'd awfully like the sled and the pie. Where do you live?"
Miss McPherson did not reply directly to this, but said instead: "I am going to America in a few days and shall see your Aunt Betsey. What shall I tell her for you?"