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‘What are you wanting to see Cass for?’ asked Mrs Six-toed curiously, as she wiped the baby’s dirty face with a still dirtier apron. ‘If it’s about that Sunday School concert she can’t go and that’s flat. She hasn’t a decent rag. How can I get her any? I ask you.’

‘No, it’s not about the concert,’ said Nan drearily. She might as well tell Mrs Thomas the whole story. She would have to know it anyhow. ‘I came to tell her… to tell her that… that she is me and I’m her!’

Perhaps Mrs Six-toed might be forgiven for not thinking this very lucid.

‘You must be cracked,’ she said. ‘Whatever on earth do you mean?’

Nan lifted her head. The worst was now over.

‘I mean that Cassie and I were born the same night and… and… the nurse changed us because she had a spite at Mother, and… and… Cassie ought to be living at Ingleside… and having advantages.’

The last phrase was one she had heard her Sunday School teacher use, but Nan thought it made a dignified ending to a very lame speech.

Mrs Six-toed stared at her.

‘Am I crazy or are you? What you’ve been saying doesn’t make any sense. Whoever told you such a rigmarole?’

‘Dovie Johnson.’

Mrs Six-toed threw back her tousled head and laughed. She might be dirty and draggled, but she had an attractive laugh. ‘I might have knowed it. I’ve been washing for her aunt all summer and that kid is a pill. My, doesn’t she think it smart to fool people! Well, littie Miss What’s-your-name, you’d better not be believing all Dovie’s yarns or she’ll lead you a merry dance.’

‘Do you mean it isn’t true?’ gasped Nan.

‘Not very likely. Good glory, you must be pretty green to fall for anything like that. Cass must be a good year older than you. Who on earth are you, anyhow?’

‘I’m Nan Blythe.’ Oh, beautiful thought! She was Nan Blythe!

‘Nan Blythe! One of the Ingleside twins! Why, I remember the night you were born. I happened to call at Ingleside on an errand. I wasn’t married to Six-toed then… more’s the pity I ever was… and Cass’s mother was living and healthy, with Cass beginning to walk. You look like your Dad’s mother… she was there that night, too, proud as Punch over her twin granddaughters. And to think you’d no more sense than to believe a crazy yarn like that.’

‘I’m in the habit of believing people,’ said Nan, rising with a slight stateliness of manner, but too deliriously happy to want to snub Mrs Six-toed very sharply.

‘Well, it’s a habit you’d better get out of in this kind of a world,’ said Mrs Six-toed cynically, ‘and quit running round with kids who like to fool people. Sit down, child. You can’t go home till this shower’s over. It’s pouring rain and dark as a stack of black cats. Why, she’s gone… the child’s gone.’

Nan was already blotted out in the downpour. Nothing but the wild exultation born of Mrs Six-toed’s assurances could have carried her home through that storm. The wind buffeted her, the rain streamed upon her, the appalling thunderclaps made her think the world had burst open. Only the incessant icy-blue glare of the lightning showed her the road. Again and again she slipped and fell. But at last she reeled, dripping, and mud-plastered, into the hall at Ingleside.

Mother ran and caught her in her arms.

‘Darling, what a fright you have given us! Oh, where have you been?’

‘I only hope Jem and Walter won’t catch their deaths out in that rain searching for you,’ said Susan, the sharpness of strain in her voice.

Nan had almost had the breath battered out of her. She could only gasp as she felt Mother’s arm enfolding her:

‘Oh, Mother, I’m me… really me. I’m not Cassie Thomas and I’ll never be anybody but me again.’

‘The poor pet is delirious,’ said Susan. ‘She must have et something that disagreed with her.’

Anne bathed Nan and put her to bed before she would let her talk.

Then she heard the whole story.

‘Oh, Mummy, am I really your child?’

‘Of course, darling. How could you think anything else?’

‘I didn’t ever think Dovie would tell me a story… not Dovie.