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32 favourably toward Mark if Win, and not the young girls, assumed the responsibility for him.

“Walpole, did you say?” Mrs. Moulton repeated after Win. “Mark Walpole? What was your father’s name? I knew of Walpoles in Massachusetts—what was your town?”

“Worcester, and my father’s name was Cathay. My grandfather was in India, and was pretty tired of it. He named my father Cathay because he felt as though he had been there a hundred years, had ‘a cycle of Cathay,’ you know. Hard on my father to get such a name, wasn’t it?” replied Mark.

“That’s the Walpole I meant!” Mrs. Moulton triumphed. “The very one! I didn’t know him, but a friend of my girlhood did; one couldn’t forget that name. Suppose you sit here and talk to me.” She led the way to a bench and motioned Mark to a place beside her.

“And suppose you sit here and talk to me!” echoed her husband, drawing a chair close to the one he took and inviting Mary to it. Mr. Moulton availed himself of most opportunities to appropriate Mary, his favourite of the three girls whom his friend had left to his guardianship, dear as they all were to him.

But the conversation did not divide itself off