The darling! She is seven
years old now, Mr. Gordon; but I think that in those seven years enough
has happened to me to make me feel three times seven years old."
"Go ahead, Ida," said the gentleman cheerfully. "Tell it in your own way."
Thus encouraged, the girl began, and she did tell it in her own way. But
it was not a brief way, and both Mr. Gordon and Betty asked questions and
that, too, increased the difficulty of Ida's telling her story.
She had been the only living child of Gwynne Bellethorne, who had been a
horse breeder and sometimes a turfman in one of the lower English
counties. She had been motherless since her third birthday. Her only
living relative was her father's sister, likewise Ida Bellethorne, who had
been estranged from her brother for several years and had made her own
way on the continent and later in America on the concert stage.
Ida, the present Ida, remembered seeing her aunt but once. She had come to
Bellethorne Park the very week the black mare was foaled. When they all
went out to see the little, awkward, kicking colt in the big box stall,
separated from its whinnying mother by a strong barred fence, the owner of
the stables had laughingly named the filly after his sister.
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