Chapter 2

It was not long before all Houghtonsville knew the story, and there was not a man, woman, or child in the town that did not take the liveliest interest in the little maid at Five Oaks who had passed through so amazing an experience. To be lost at five years of age in a great city, to be snatched from wealth, happiness, and a loving mother’s arms, only to be thrust instantly into poverty, misery, and loneliness; and then to be, after four long years, suddenly returned—no wonder Houghtonsville held its breath and questioned if it all indeed were true.

Bit by bit the little girl’s history was related in every house in town; and many a woman—and some men—wept over the tale of how the little fingers had sewed on buttons in the attic sweat shop, and pasted bags in the ill-smelling cellar. The story of the coöperative housekeeping establishment in one corner of the basement kitchen, where she, together with Patty and the twins, “divvied up” the day’s “haul,”—that, too, came in for its share of exclamatory adjectives, as did the account of how she was finally discovered through her finding her own name over the little cot-bed at Mont-Lawn—the little bed that Mrs. Kendall had endowed in the name of her lost daughter, in the children’s vacation home for the poor little waifs from the city.

“An’ ter think of her findin’ her own baby jest by givin’ some other woman’s baby a bit of joy!” cried Mrs. Merton of the old red farmhouse, when the story was told to her. “But, there! ain’t that what she’s always doin’ for folks—somethin’ ter make ‘em happy? Didn’t she bring my own child, Sadie, an’ the boy, Bobby, back from the city, and ain’t Sadie gettin’ well an’ strong on the farm here? And it’s a comfort ter me, too, when I remember ‘twas Bobby who first found the little Margaret cryin’ in the streets there in New York, an’ took her home ter my Sadie. ‘Twa’n’t much Sadie could do for the poor little lamb, but she did what she could till old Sullivan got his claws on her and kept her shut up out o’ sight. But there! what’s past is past, and there ain’t no use frettin’ over it. She’s home now, in her own mother’s arms, and I’m thinkin’ it’s the whole town that’s rejoicin’!”