Mrs. Carew spoke as if she knew what she was talking about. And
perhaps, indeed, she did--better than she cared to tell Pollyanna.
Certainly, before she slept that night, a letter left her hands
addressed to one Henry Dodge, summoning him to an immediate conference
as to certain changes and repairs to be made at once in tenements she
owned. There were, moreover, several scathing sentences concerning
"rag-stuffed windows," and "rickety stairways," that caused this same
Henry Dodge to scowl angrily, and to say a sharp word behind his
teeth--though at the same time he paled with something very like fear.




CHAPTER XI

A SURPRISE FOR MRS. CAREW


The matter of repairs and improvements having been properly and
efficiently attended to, Mrs. Carew told herself that she had done her
duty, and that the matter was closed. She would forget it. The boy was
not Jamie--he could not be Jamie. That ignorant, sickly, crippled boy
her dead sister's son? Impossible! She would cast the whole thing from
her thoughts.

It was just here, however, that Mrs. Carew found herself against an
immovable, impassable barrier: the whole thing refused to be cast from
her thoughts. Always before her eyes was the picture of that bare
little room and the wistful-faced boy. Always in her ears was that