It would have been impossible to find two girls in greater contrast than Hester and Nannie, for all they were such chums. Nannie, in her white frocks and big sun hats, was a sweet little maiden whose soft brown eyes did not belie her disposition. She had a soft, drawling voice and dear little clinging ways that made the Colonel’s sobriquet of “Puss” seem most fitting. She was fast growing to womanhood, but was in all things childishly appealing, though that she was not without character was shown in various ways, culminating in her loyalty to Sidney Renshawe in spite of the painful opposition.
Hester wore white muslin frocks and big hats, too—relics of their last year’s Paris shopping. It had always been the avowed wish of their father that in the event of his dying before them they should not wear black. He had the strongest aversion to the garb of mourning and the girls remembered and respected his wishes. So they had made no change in their wardrobe, though since they had come down to Virginia they confined themselves almost wholly to white.
Simple enough these frocks were, but Hester wore hers with an air that gave them something of her personality and made her distinctive wherever she appeared. There was never anything nondescript about Hester. And her moods were so many and so varied that her cousin Nancy, who did not in the least understand her, told the Colonel despairingly that she must be a witch—there certainly was not a drop of Fairleigh blood in her. Julie, forced to be quiet through indisposition, was regarded by her cousin as really quite patrician and not in the least—and this was a wonderful admission—not in the least vulgarized by work. Colonel Driscoe agreed to her last statement and let the rest go. He found that the simplest way to avoid argument.
Kenneth Landor became a frequent caller and grew to be an immense favorite with the household, but he seldom had the satisfaction of more than a few words with Hester. One morning he rode over and deemed the Fates more than kind when, finding Julie on the porch, she sent him down into the garden, where she said he would find Hester helping George Washington pick blackberries.
His first glimpse of her was a sun-bonnet; then two sadly stained hands reaching up among the bushes, then a white figure in sharp relief against the green; then Peter Snooks barked and she turned and saw him.
“Good morning,” she said sweetly, from out of her sun-bonnet, giving him a look that seemed propitious. “Have a blackberry?”
“Thanks, don’t mind if I do. May I help pick?”
“If you like. I can’t stop, you know, for old Aunt Rachael is expecting them for dinner. We’re great cronies, she and I. I steal out to the kitchen quarters often to see her when Cousin Nancy is not looking.”
“Do you mind pushing back that sun-bonnet?” he asked beseechingly. “I know you’re inside of it somewhere and I should like to see you.”
She laughed and pushed it half way back. “If that does not suit you I’ll take it off altogether.”