Melvina’s dark eyes looked in the direction Anna pointed. “Thank you, Anna. How white they are, and what a queer noise they make,” she responded seriously.
Anna’s eyes danced with delight as she heard Luretta’s half-repressed giggle at Melvina’s reply. She resolved that Luretta should realize of how little importance Melvina Lyon, with all her dolls, and her starched skirts like wheels, really was.
“And are those not big alder trees, Melly?” she continued, pointing to a group of fine pine trees near by.
Again Melvina’s eyes followed the direction of Anna’s pointing finger, and again the minister’s little daughter replied politely that the trees were indeed very fine alders.
Luretta was now laughing without any effort to conceal her amusement. That any little girl in Maine should not know a partridge from a gull, or an alder bush from a pine tree, seemed too funny to even make it necessary to try to be polite; and Luretta was now ready to join in the game of finding out how little Melvina Lyon, “the smartest and best-behaved child in the settlement,” really knew.
“And, Danna, perhaps Melvina has never seen the birds we call clams?” she suggested.
Melvina looked from Anna to Luretta questioningly. These little girls could not be laughing at her, she thought, recalling with satisfaction that it was well known that she could spell the names of every city in Europe, and repeat the list of all England’s kings and queens. She remembered, also, that Anna Weston was called a tomboy, and that her mother said it was a scandal for a little girl to have short hair. So she again replied pleasantly that she had never known that clams were birds. “We have them stewed very often,” she declared.
Anna fairly danced about the neat little figure in the well-starched blue linen skirt.
“Oh, Melly! You must come down to the shore, and we will show you a clam’s nest,” she said, remembering that only yesterday she had discovered the nest of a kingfisher in an oak tree whose branches nearly touched the shore, and could point this out to the ignorant Melvina.
“But I am to visit Lucia Horton this afternoon, and I must not linger,” objected Melvina.