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82 the way across the ocean to England,” laughed Mark. “I didn’t know you could talk so fast, Mary! I don’t mind your forgetting me. It’s a big thing that’s happened to you, and I’m a good deal stirred up, myself, to think you’ve found out your mother’s alive and is coming back. I know how I’d feel if I could hear my mother hadn’t died, though I never knew my mother, either. But I knew my father; we were chums.”

“What a nice boy you are, Mark Walpole!” said Mary, frankly holding out her hand. “This is another bit of luck this spring! I’m glad we’ve found you for a friend.”

“We’ve found him! H’m!” said Florimel, with a withering scorn that might have withered more effectually if her face had been less dusty from rubbing it with hands that had been pushing against backs of pieces of furniture. “I guess no one found him but me—in the bulrushes down in town! I wish your name was Moses, Mark; it would be so funny and fitting.”

“I believe I’d just as lief have a name that isn’t so close a fit to that one incident, Florimel. Maybe Mark will fit something else that happens to me; it sounds like a name that could come in pat,” said Mark.