The girls strolled down towards the corral, for it was getting late, and the ride lay before them. Polly had lingered before a picture that hung over the old chest of drawers in Mrs. Sandy’s bedroom. It was a portrait of Miss Honoria, taken in the seventies, a wreath of flowers on her head, and a low-necked dress with a fichu of white Spanish lace about her shoulders. Very girlish and lovely it looked. Mrs. Sandy lingered too.
“Does she look at all like that now?” she asked, softly. “That was my favorite picture.”
Polly felt a sudden impulse, and spoke on the spur of it.
“No, she doesn’t look at all that way. She’s quite old looking, and very gray, and she hardly ever smiles. Mrs. Sandy, please forgive me, but what is the trouble?”
“Trouble, dear child?” A little flush stole to Diantha’s cheek, and she bent over to smooth the linen pillow shams, already without a wrinkle. “What can you mean?”
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Polly went on, “but I have always wished I had a sister all my very own, and here you have one, and—and—”
“And what, Polly?”
“And you never see each other, or write, or anything. Was it—was the trouble so bad as all that? I don’t see how anything could ever be that way with sisters.”
“Don’t you, dear? Perhaps you will some day.” Diantha paused, and thought for a minute. They could hear the laughter of the girls mingling with the Chief’s deep bass down at the corral as they got the ponies ready for the home trip. “It is so far back now that only in the hearts of a few old families lie the pain and the rancor of the old war days. My father, Colonel Calvert, never forgave the North. He believed the government should have purchased the slaves and then freed them under special act of Congress, and forbidden slave-holding thereafter. But he held it as unnatural and unlawful for brother to lift hand against brother, or to take away property rights without restitution. This is all so far back that you cannot get even the shadow of its intensity, and I am glad you cannot, but my childhood days were filled with it. Honoria has all the Calvert pride, but I am afraid I had not, for, dearie, I married a Northerner, and love him better than all of Virginia, and so—” she made a hopeless little gesture with her slim, pretty hands, “so Honoria has never forgiven me, nor will she accept Sandy, no, not after thirty-five years. Honoria is very consistent.” She finished with a sigh.
“Polly, are you ready to go?” called Peggie outside.