Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/67

 at heart a Sanderson. Therefore she knew what was what. And the secret was hers that the child's real home was a long way from Number FiveBeaconsfield Villas, Laxton. Eliza could never quite forget the source of origin of her adopted daughter.

Every month that went by seemed to make it increasingly difficult to forget that. Princess Geraldine herself, that figure of legend who used to call at Bowley every twenty-sixth of March, could never have been in more devout or judicious hands than little Mistress Mary in that of the Council of Three, not to mention those of Miss Sarah Allcock, specially coöpted. No child so tended and cared for, whose welfare was so carefully studied by experts, could have failed to grow in beauty and grace. She was so perfectly charming and superb when in the charge of the discreet Miss Allcock, she took the air with her wonderful hair, her patrician features and her white socks, that the nearest neighbors began to resent it. It was considered rather swank on the part of the Kellys to set up such a child at all. They were surprised that Joe, a popular man, should not have a truer sense of the fitness of things. They were less surprised at Mrs. Joe, who was not quite so popular. But Joe was a sensible fellow, and he should have seen to it that the child did not become the talk of the neighborhood.

Yet, after all, it may not have been so much the fault of Joe or of Eliza, his wife, that the child became the talk of the neighborhood. In the purview of local society, whose salon was Mrs. Connor's, the green-*grocer's lady, at the end of the street, the blame lay at the door of Miss Sarah Allcock. The truth was the