Fidgets
"AUNTIE, what does 'ruthless' mean?"
"Why do you wish to know, Hecla?"
"I saw it in a book."
"You shall show me the passage by-and-by. Just now you have to work."
Hecla was hemming a small pocket-handkerchief, with red edges. She liked doing this, because it was for "Chris," but she did not love work for its own sake. She liked nothing which meant sitting still.
Hers was a rather curious name. She had been born in Iceland, under the shadow, so to speak, of Mount Hecla. That was why she was so called.
She sat at a small table in the middle of the room, with her back to the window, and Miss Storey, a slender, small, middle-aged lady, was near the fire. At Miss Storey's feet lay a fine black Persian cat, fast asleep; and in the window hung a gilt cage, the canary within ever hopping from perch to perch, except when it stopped to feed or to sing.
Sunshine streamed full upon the cage and upon the draped white curtains. It was a sunny day, but very cold, and patches of snow in the front garden told of a recent fall.
Miss Storey kept very upright and very still, and her small delicate fingers scarcely seemed to move as they knitted. But Hecla was neither upright nor still. She was a restless little mortal; quite as restless as the canary in its cage. She too was slim, and also rather tall for her age; and she had an anxious way of wrinkling her forehead, as if trying to do something beyond her power. She wore a brown holland pinafore over a brown stuff frock, and her hair hung in limp rats' tails down her back.