Easter is the only girl, a sort of happy afterthought at the end of a long family of five boys, with six years between her and her next brother.
Chris is the only precious child, born after a good many years of marriage to devoted and adoring parents.
Easter doesn’t think much of boys. They are common as blackberries in her family and she is keenly sensible of her own distinction in having, as she puts it, “chosen to come as a girl.”
Thus it came about that her mental attitude struck Chris with something of a shock; not wholly unpleasant; stimulating; the tingle of resentment tempered by a thrill of amused surprise. It was so odd and new to meet anyone who felt like that.
Besides, till he came to live in Easter’s village he had been rather lonely, and she supplied a felt want. Especially had this been so in the last two bewildering years, for his parents had seemed less absorbed in him than was quite dutiful. And for the last year his father had vanished altogether to that mysterious place that swallowed up so many pleasant and familiar folk; that overshadowing, omnipotent, vastly extending region known as “the front.”
Easter, on her part, welcomed the society of Chris. She, too, was lonely by reason of the very same cause as Chris. Little girls were scarce in that village and Easter’s mother was busy all day long with war work of one sort and another, and owing to the same cause Chris’s governess, Miss Radley, only gave him her society during the bare hours of lessons, which lessons had for some time been shared by Easter.
Now Easter was much better at lessons than Chris; much quicker, in most things far more intelligent and receptive. Only in arithmetic did Chris shine, and in this subject he had soared away from Easter and did abstruse calculations in the end of the book all by himself with Miss Radley.
Easter was born on an Easter Day, and this year she was eight years old. Chris was born on Christmas Day, and last Christmas he was eight. Therefore, in spite of his prowess in arithmetic, he maintains that he is a year older than Easter.
“Weren’t you born in 1908?” he demands sternly.
“Ye-es,” answers Easter, “on an Easter Sunday. They were so pleased.”