"Maybe there weren't enough to go 'round," continued the puzzled Dot. "There are so many of 'em of one name----Williams, and Georges, and Edwardses. Don't English people have any more names to give to their sov-runs?"
"That's what I mean," said the placid Dot. "The lady knows what I mean."
"Of course I do, dear," agreed the woman in the gray cloak. "But I expect the mothers of kings, like the mothers of other little boys, like to name their sons after their fathers.
"Now, children, I must go," she added briskly, getting up off the bench and handing Tess the written paper. "Good-bye. I hope I shall meet you both again very soon. Let me kiss you, Tess--and you, Dorothy Kenway. It has done me good to know you."
She kissed both children quickly, and then set off along the Parade Ground walk. Tess and Dot bade her good-bye shrilly, turning themselves toward the old Corner House.
"We never asked the lady her name--or who she was."
"We-ell----would that be perlite?" asked Dot, doubtfully.
"Yes. She asked our names. We don't know anything about her--and I _do_ think she is so nice!"
"So do I," agreed Dot. "And that gray cloak----"
"With the pretty little bonnet and ruche," added Tess.
"She isn't the Salvation Army," said Dot, remembering that that order was uniformed from seeing them on the streets of Bloomingsburg, where the Kenways had lived before they had fallen heir to Uncle Peter Stower's estate.
"Of course not!" Tess cried. "And she don't look like one o' those deaconesses that came to see Ethel Mumford's mother when she was sick--do you remember?"
"Of course I remember--everything!" said the positive Dot. "Wasn't I a great, big girl when we came to Milton to live?"
"Why--why," stammered her sister, not wishing to displease Dot, but bound to be honest. "You aren't a very big girl, even now, Dot Kenway."
"Humph!" exclaimed Dot, quite vexed. "I wear bigger shoes and stockings, and Ruth is having Miss Ann Titus let down the hems of all my old dresses a full inch--so now!"
"I expect you _have_ grown some, Dot," admitted Tess, reflectively. "But you aren't big enough even now to brag about."
The youngest Kenway might have been deeply offended by this--and shown that she had taken offence, too--had something new not taken her attention at the very moment she and Tess were entering the side gate of the old Corner House premises.