CHAPTER VII
AN UNDESERVING CHILD
Try as hard as she would, Marian could not fit into Aunt Amelia's home. Everywhere within its walls, she was Marian the unwanted. Saddest of all, the child annoyed Uncle George. Not at first, to be sure; he liked his little niece in the beginning, but when Aunt Amelia and the little Ella were rendered unhappy by her presence, that made a difference.
Early in the summer Uncle George insisted upon taking Marian wherever Ella and her mother went, to picnics, to the circus and other places of amusement, but as something disagreeable was sure to happen and trouble seemed to follow little Marian, she was finally left at home where her gay talk and merriment could not reach the ears of Aunt Amelia, who called her talk "clatter" and her laughter "cackle."
"It's cucumbers," sobbed Marian, the first time she was left with the sympathetic housemaid.
"What do you mean, you poor little thing?" asked the girl.
The child looked up in astonishment. "Don't you remember about the cucumbers?" she asked reproachfully.