"We used to be as poor as church mice," Jack informed him confidentially. "That was before grandmother died. She quarreled with my father and when he died she marched off to Europe and took all her money with her so mother couldn't find a bit of it. Aunt Helen came back first and saw Nan and Nan made friends with her, though Aunt Sarah—you don't know Aunt Sarah Dent, she's mother's aunt and she couldn't bear Grandma Corner. Well, she just made an awful fuss and wouldn't let Nan go over to Uplands at all. Nan snuck off, though, and Aunt Sarah was as mad as hops. She shut Nan up and Nan fell down-stairs and broke her arm and then Uplands burned down and grandmother had to come to our house where she died." Jack took a long breath after her gallop through these annals of family history. Then she went on again:
"Mother was up in the Adirondacks and Aunt Sarah was keeping house and looking after us children, but mother came back and Aunt Helen went shares with us; her mother said she must, so Jean and I don't have to wear Nan's and Mary Lee's old clothes any more. This is a brand new coat and so is the hat. Don't you think they are pretty? Jean's are just the same, only Jean has a blue hair-ribbon and I have a brown one; we are twins, you know. Jean always calls us trins; she can't say twins, nor twice, nor queen, nor any such words. She gets her tongue twisted over them, she says. We are going to dress just alike till we are in our teens, and then mother says we are not to, for she doesn't like to see big girls dress the same. I think, too, I would rather not, then, though I don't mind it now."
"Why not now?" asked Mr. Pinckney to encourage her to keep up her chatter.
"Because," Jack leaned nearer to whisper, "if I can't find my things I can put on Jean's and no one knows the difference."
Mr. Pinckney shook his head. "That's not square, you know," he said.
"Oh, isn't it?" Jack considered the matter carefully, then she asked: "Why?"
"Because it is deceiving, you see. You are making others think it is yours when it isn't, and beside, if your sister came to look for her things and couldn't find them it would give her some trouble and annoyance; we should spare our friends that when we can."
"All right; I won't do it again," said Jack cheerfully. Then hastily changing the subject she said, "Nan's awfully smart. She can do all sorts of things. You ought just to hear her play on the piano and see what she can contrive out of nothing. I just love Nan."
"And don't you love the others?"
"Of course. Jean is my twin and I am bound to love her, but Mary Lee always pushes me on to scrapes somehow and Nan gets me out of them. I am always getting into scrapes like sticking in the elevator, you know. I fell into the pig-pen once."