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“Alanna’ll find out who the wife was. She never fails me,” said Mrs. Costello, turning from Gertrude’s crib with sudden decision in her voice. “And I’ll do something, never fear!”

Alanna did not fail. She came home the next day brimming with the importance of her fulfilled mission.

“Her mother’s name was Harmonica Moore!” announced Alanna, who could be depended upon for unfailing inaccuracy in the matter of names. Teresa and the boys burst into joyous laughter, but the information was close enough for Mrs. Costello.

“Monica Moore!” she exclaimed. “Well, for pity’s sake! Of course I knew her, and a sweet, dear girl she was, too. Stop laughing at Alanna, all of you, or I’ll send you upstairs until Dad gets after you. Very quiet and shy she was, but the lovely singing voice! There wasn’t a tune in the world she wouldn’t lilt to you if you asked her. Well, the poor child, I wish I’d never lost sight of her.” She pondered a moment. “Is the boy still serving Mass at St. Mary’s, Dan?” she said then.

“Sure,” said Jim. For Dan was absorbed in the task of restoring Alanna’s ruffled feelings by inserting a lighted match into his mouth.

“Well, that’s good,” pursued their mother. “You bring him home to breakfast after Mass any day this week, Jim. And, Tess, you must bring the little girl in after school. Tell her I knew her dear mother.” Mrs. Costello’s eyes, as she returned placidly to the task of labelling jars upon shining jars of marmalade, shone with their most radiant expression.

Marg’ret and Joe Hammond were constant visitors in the big Costello house after that. Their father was away, looking for work, Mrs. Costello imagined and feared, and they were living with some vague “lady across the hall.” So the Mayor’s wife had free rein, and she used it. When Marg’ret got one of her shapeless, leaky shoes cut in the Costello barn, she was promptly presented with shining new ones, “the way I couldn’t let you get a cold and die on your father, Marg’ret, dear!” said Mrs. Costello. The twins’ outgrown suits were found to fit Joe Hammond to perfection, “and a lucky thing I thought of it, Joe, before I sent them off to my sister’s children in Chicago!” observed the Mayor’s wife. The Mayor himself heaped his little guests’ plates with the choicest of everything on the table, when the Hammonds stayed to dinner. Marg’ret frequently came home between Teresa and Alanna to lunch, and when Joe breakfasted after Mass with Danny and Jim, Mrs. Costello packed his lunch with theirs, exulting in the chance. The children became fast friends, and indeed it would have been hard to find better playfellows for the young Costellos, their mother often thought, than the clever, appreciative little Hammonds.

Meantime, the rehearsals for Mother Superior’s Golden Jubilee proceeded steadily, and Marg’ret, Teresa, and Alanna could talk of nothing else. The delightful irregularity of lessons, the enchanting confusion of rehearsals, the costumes, programme, and decorations were food for endless chatter. Alanna, because Marg’ret was so genuinely fond of her, lived in the seventh heaven of bliss, trotting about with the bigger girls, joining in their plans, and running their errands. The “grandchildren” were to have a play, entitled “By Nero’s Command,” in which both Teresa and Marg’ret sustained prominent parts, and even Alanna was allotted one line to speak. It became an ordinary thing, in the Costello house, to hear the little girl earnestly repeating this line to herself at quiet moments, “The lions,–oh, the lions!” Teresa and Marg’ret, in their turn, frequently rehearsed a heroic dialogue which began with the stately line, uttered by Marg’ret in the person of a Roman princess: “My slave, why art thou always so happy at thy menial work?”

One day Mrs. Costello called the three girls to her sewing-room, where a brisk young woman was smoothing lengths of snowy lawn on the long table.