"Of course I won't tell," Sally assured her earnestly. "But, please, did you find out anything?" She felt that she could not bear the suspense a minute longer.
"You let me tell this my own way, child," Mrs. Bybee reproved her. "Well, you saw that missionary rig I had on this morning? It turned the trick all right. Lucky for you, this ain't the fastest growing town in the state, even if that billboard across from the station does say so. I found the address you gave me, all right. Same number, same house. Four-or-five-room dump, that may have been a pretty good imitation of a California bungalow twelve years ago. All run-down now, with a swarm of kids tumbling in and out and sticking out their tongues at me when their ma's back was turned. She said she'd lived there two years; moved here from Wisconsin. Didn't know a soul in Stanton when she moved here, and hadn't had time to get acquainted with a new baby every fourteen months."
"Poor thing!" Sally murmured, finding pity in her heart for the bedraggled drudge Mrs. Bybee's words pictured so vividly. But those too-numerous babies had a mother. What she wanted to know was--did she, Sally Ford, have a mother?
Then a memory, so long submerged that she did not realize that it existed in her subconscious mind, pushed up, spilled out surprisingly: "There was a big oak tree in the corner of the yard. I used to swing. Someone pushed the swing--someone--" she fumbled for more, but the memory failed.
"It's still there, and there's still a swing," Mrs. Bybee admitted. "One of those dirty-faced little brats was climbing up and down the ropes like a monkey. Well, I reckon that's where you used to live, right enough. I asked this woman--name of Hickson--if any of her neighbors had lived there many years, and she pointed to the house next door and said 'Old Lady Bangs' owned the house and had lived there for more'n twenty years. This old Mrs. Bangs--"
"Bangs!" Sally cried. "Bangs! It was Gramma Bangs who swung me! I remember now! Gramma Bangs. She made me a rag doll with shoe-button eyes and I cried every night for a long time after I went to the orphanage because mama hadn't brought my doll. Did you see Gramma Bangs? Oh, Mrs. Bybee, if I could go to see her again!"