“A few,” Mrs. Savory said looking pleased. “Oh Silva, bring the baskets out! Maida you have never seen Silva and Tyma, have you? They’re my sister’s children. My sister died last summer and now they’re living with us.”
A voice answered, “In a moment.” It was a child’s voice and yet it had a curious grown-up accent as of an unusual decision of character. The doors of one of the tents parted and a girl’s head appeared in the opening. The children stared at her. For an instant nobody spoke. The head disappeared. When the girl emerged, her hands were full of baskets. Behind her came a lad very like her but older.
Silva Burle was a slender brown girl. She did not look any older than Rosie; but she was much taller—and she was as tawny as Rosie was dark. Her hair, a strange amber color, hung straight to her shoulders where the ends turned upwards, not in a curl, but in a big soft wave. Her eyes were not big but they were long; they were like bits of shining amber set under her thin straight brows. Her skin was a tanned amber too. She wore a much-patched rusty dark skirt with a white middy blouse, a tattered, yellow-ribbon tie.
Tyma, her brother, was slim too but strong-looking, active. He had a dark skin and hair so black that there was a purple steeliness about it. In all this swarthy coloring, his eyes, a clear blue, seemed strange and unexpected. His brows were thick and they lowered as the eyes under them contemplated the group of children. Silva’s lips curled disdainfully upwards.
Silva nodded briefly when her aunt performed the simple introduction, “This is Maida and her friends, Silva,” but Tyma merely stared. Then turning his back, he strolled away to where the horses were feeding; untethered one of them. With a single leap of his athletic body, he was on its back. In another instant, the green leaves of the forest closed around him as he disappeared riding bare-back into it.
“What beautiful baskets you have Silva!” Maida said politely.
Silva did not deign to answer. She spread her handiwork out on the table which stood not far from the fire and then, leaving her prospective customers to their choice, went over to the fire; sat down before it, her back to the children.
Aunt Save seemed to feel dimly that something was wrong. She moved over to the table and began displaying the baskets.
Maida made an effort to relieve her embarrassment. “Oh Aunt Save,” she said, “what do you suppose is the first thing I am going to do when I get time?” Without waiting for an answer, she went swiftly on. “I’m going to wash and iron all Lucy’s clothes and pack them nicely away in a little old hair-cloth trunk which I found in the attic. Lucy,” she explained to her friends, “is a great big rag-baby doll that Aunt Save made for me when I was little. It’s as big as a baby two years old. I was fonder of it than any doll I have ever had, and so Granny Flynn made it a whole outfit of clothes—all the things a baby should have. I am going to pack them away and keep them for my daughter.”
“Oh, do you mean that rag-baby doll that’s sitting in the little chair in your room?” Rosie asked. “And that little queer brown trunk under the window where the tree is?”