"I remember perfectly," answered the girl.
"Well, business took me to New York about that time, and I thought it a good opportunity to hunt up a governess for you. So I advertised in the New York papers, giving my address at an uptown office, while my own business kept me down town.
"The first letter I opened interested me so much that I gave my whole attention to that first, and so it happened that I had no occasion to touch the others. It was from one Ann White, who described herself as a motherless and fatherless girl of sixteen, a stranger in this country, who was trying to get employment as assistant teacher, governess, or copyist, and who was well fitted to take sole charge of a little girl seven years old.
"Perhaps this might not have impressed me, but she went on to write that she had not a friend in the whole country, that she was utterly destitute and desolate, and begged me for Heaven's mercy not to throw her letter aside, but to see her and give her a trial. She inclosed her photograph, not, as she wrote, from any vanity, but that I might see her face and take pity on her.
"Cora, there was an air of childish frankness and simplicity about her letter that was well illustrated by her photograph. It was that of a sweet-smiling baby face; a sunny, innocent beautiful face. I answered the letter immediately, asking for her address, that I might call and see her. The next day I received her answer, thanking me with enthusiastic earnestness for my prompt attention to her note, and giving me the number and street of her residence in Harlem. I got on a Second Avenue car and rode out to Harlem; got off at the terminus, walked up a cross street and walked some distance to a bijou of a brown cottage, standing in shaded grounds, with sunny gleams and flower beds, and half covered by creeping roses, clematis, wisteria, and all that.
"I went in, and was received by the beautiful being that you have known as Rose Flowers. She was dressed in some misty, cloud-like pale blue fabric that set off her blonde beauty to perfection. After we were seated and had talked some time, I telling her what light duties would be required of her--only the care of one good little girl of seven years old, and of a very mild old lady who was the only lady in the house, and of the old gentleman who was the head of the family, strict but just in all his dealings; and of our country house in the mountains and our town house in the State capital--and she expressing the greatest and frankest anxiety to become a member of such a happy, amiable, prosperous family, and declaring with childish boasting that she was quite competent to perform all the duties expected of her and would perform them conscientiously, I suddenly asked her for her references.