“Did you have a good time with Aunt Marcia, Chloe?”  
“Er-r—certainly, Mimi. Why do you ask?”
 
“Nothing.”
 
Mimi blushed. She could not fib with a straight face. She edged around keeping her back away from Chloe as she was clutching behind her a letter which had just come from Daddy. Perhaps it was the effect of the letter but it seemed to Mimi, Chloe had looked disturbed and paler since the holidays. In contrast to her wistful dark eyes, her skin seemed ivory white. The other girls had come back sparkling and glowing, telling and re-telling good times they experienced at home. Betsy was radiant. Sue was voluble. The first night she was back Mrs. Cole had had to rap sharply on the door of Tumble Inn to stop the talking after light-bell. They hadn’t given Chloe a chance to get a word in edge ways had she wanted it. Mimi had waited hopefully for the slightest word from her but none had come. She had to pull to get much out of Chloe.
 
“You didn’t have an opportunity to ask Aunt Marcia—anything—important?”
 
“What could I ask, Mimi?” Chloe countered. “The once or twice I have the topic Aunt Marcia has hedged or changed the subject. She was so kind Christmas and seemed so happy to have me with her. She must be lonely, too, or she never would have adopted me. She tried to plan things I’d like but right in the middle of whatever we’d be doing I’d think—you’re not my Aunt, you’re not even to me! Who are you?”—Chloe was choking—“Who am I?”
 
Mimi hugged Chloe close. Chloe did not shrink. She laid her beautiful, tired head against Mimi and .
 
“You are somebody beautiful and sweet and lovely. We all love you, no matter who your Mother and Father were.”
 
“I know they were fine, too, Mimi. But it’s this awful of not knowing. I might have brothers and sisters and pass right by them any day and not know them. My mother must be tortured imagining horrible things have happened to me. I’d—I’d rather—believe—she is dead than that she has worried about me all these years.”
 
The letter which Mimi had quickly thrust in her belt when she took Chloe in her arms, crackled as the two girls sat down on the bed. Both the chairs and the vanity stool were piled up. Everything was topsy-turvy in term-end confusion.
 
Mimi was more upset than anything around her. The letter had brought her a spark of hope, so dim, so faint she dared not tell. Yet Chloe needed to know so badly; which would be worse, to give her a ray of hope that in all probability would be shattered or leave her as she was without anything to cling to? If she should tell Chloe she had told Daddy, Chloe might not like it. She might not feel as Mimi did, that any great secret could be shared with your parents without breaking your promise. Mimi could keep secrets. She had struggled hard and won to keep from telling Millie. She had never told Betsy about Madge and the alarm bell. But Chloe was again softly against her. She trembled delicately as , the crow, had trembled in Mimi’s hands while Daddy patched his broken wing. Poor Chloe! A wounded dark bird snatched from her nest before she could fly.
 
“Would you know Fritzie if you saw him or saw ............