“Really and truly she is my own sister; but no wonder you can’t just believe it, she’s so much grander and brighter than any of us. I never see a great, stone house like that I have just come away from, without thinking our Eva was made to live in it, and be a queen, with lots of common people to wait on her.”
“What house have you just come from, my little friend?”
“Mrs. Lambert’s!”
“Ha!”
“It is that great house on the corner, with so many flowers behind it. Eva is so fond of flowers, too. It is she who trains up the morning glory vines, and plants sweet peas and crimson beans among them. Sometimes I almost like our little garden as well as Mrs. Lambert’s. We plant our own flowers, you see, and that makes a difference in the way of enjoying them.”
“It does, indeed! Do you go to Mrs. Lambert’s often?”
“I never went there till Mrs. Smith took me into the grocery; but I used to pass by the garden every day. It was a little farther to school through that street, but I loved to walk slow and look through the iron fence, where the great tea-roses and geraniums seemed to set the ground on fire, and that white-headed old man moving about among them was like a picture. At first he was awful cross, and would order me away, but after a while, when he saw that I never so much as reached my hand through, he would sometimes chuck a rose, or a sprig of something sweet through the fence, and go away chuckling to himself. I always carried the flowers to Ruthy, or our Eva, they are both so fond of them, you know, and this made us all just a little acquainted with the great house up yonder. I dare say the proud lady would think our garden no great things, but the girls love it a good deal better than she loves hers, I promise you; for, go by ever so often, I hardly ever see her in it.”
“Have you ever spoken to the lady?”
“What—me? No, indeed; but she spoke to me once!”
“How was that?”