THE friendship so strangely started between Mrs. Burnham and the girl thrust upon her conscience, grew apace. As Ruth had surmised, her old friend Flossy had lost none of her charm with young people, and she won Maybelle's fascinated interest from the first moment of their meeting; an interest that developed rapidly into love.
When Mrs. Roberts's young people came home--an event that Ruth, at least, had dreaded for Maybelle's sake--it was found that the charm was increased. Ruth, in writing to Erskine about them, which she did at some length, had added: "I might have saved you much of this description, by simply saying that the children are very like their mother. Even Erskine, tall and muscular as he is, a thorough boy in every sense of the word, and a manly one, yet has that indefinable indescribable charm about him that our little Flossy always had and always will have, should she live to be a hundred, bless her! what a blessing she would be to this old world if she should. Do you realize, dear, that he is your namesake, as well as mine? At first I was not sure that I wanted another Erskine,--there is but one to me, you know,--but Erskine Roberts is such a splendid repetition of the family name that we cannot but be proud of him."
But she gave no description of Maybelle, and mentioned her name as little as possible. She shrank almost painfully from the thought of writing about this girl to one who ought to be deeply interested in her,--as in the nature of the case Erskine should be if he knew,--and yet looked upon her as an intruder, almost resenting his mother's efforts in her behalf.
But if she kept silence about her to Erskine, she atoned for it in the amount of time and thought that she bestowed upon the child. As the weeks passed and she grew to better understand this child-woman with whom she had to deal, she found herself bestowing upon her a wealth of love and tenderness that she had not supposed any but her very own could call out. And her love was returned in royal measure. However much Maybelle might admire and love Mrs. Roberts and enjoy her son and daughters, she had given the wealth of her heart unreservedly to Mrs. Burnham. "Next to Aunt Mamie I love you best of all the world," she would declare as she patted Ruth's shoulder with a loving little touch that was peculiarly her own. "It ought always to be Aunt Mamie first, you know, because she--she _mothered_ me all those years when I was hungry for a mother. Dear Mrs. Burnham, if she were your daughter and I could be your granddaughter, would not that be perfect? But that couldn't be, of course, for Aunt Mamie loved her own dear mother better than any other mother in the world; and she was a _dear_; I loved her very much, but--how many different kinds of love there can be in the same heart!" she broke off to say, with the air of a dreamy philosopher, "Different kinds of loves and different kinds of unloves, ever so many of them! the heart is a curious country, isn't it?"