“Our Father made my face brown,” she kept thinking. “He wanted it so.” Yet something seemed to have dulled the brightness of the morning.
“I ’spect she’ll call me Ugly Nut, too, like Aunt Mean used to,” mourned Chee. She had never attended school, and though her secluded life made her an old child in some ways, it kept her wonderfully baby-like in others. Indeed, it is doubtful if years of learning or contact with wise people could ever take away her simple, questioning-like manner. It might always be “Chee’s way.”
Soon the carriage wheels were heard on the gravel drive, and sad thoughts were quickly put away in the excitement of Cousin Gertrude’s arrival.
Yes, she was, as Aunt Mean had said, a “gay thing.” At least, so it seemed as she flew about the house, visiting old nooks and corners, or out calling the chickens and feeding Fanny and the colt.
It was all very startling to Chee,—her lively movements, her merry repartee, and her show of affection. It seemed so natural for Cousin Gertrude to lean her fair head against Uncle Reuben’s shoulder. Chee would have felt extremely strange in such an act, even if she were tall enough to reach it. And as for laughing right up into Aunt Mean’s face, as though sharp words were only a joke between them, it would have been impossible for Chee to have tried it.
In the afternoon, when she found her pretty cousin sitting idle in the little grove behind the house, there was a change.
The lips that had all day been parted in laughter were drooping. Her blue eyes were watching the hill-tops as though they saw something very sad over there. At sight of Chee they brightened a little.
“Come here, you tiny witch,” she called, making room in the hammock. “Do you know you make me think of a poem I read once called ‘The Nut-Brown Maiden.’”
Chee’s eyes were shyly raised. “Nut-Brown Maiden is ever so pretty,” she said. “Aunt Mean used to call me ‘Ugly Nut,’ but my daddy was here then and he stopped her. Now she calls me ‘Chee.’”
“How odd! I like it, though. Is it an Indian name?” It seemed to the little girl her cousin must love Indian names, she spoke so tenderly. How good it was not to feel in disgrace!