ILLUSTRATIONS
| “‘Hem!’ The lawyer cleared his throat” (p. 52) | [Frontispiece] |
|---|---|
| PAGE | |
| “Bird crouched in a black heap” | [8] |
| Bird, Lammy, and Twinkle | [13] |
| “‘Buy something to-day? Nice goots ver’ cheap’” | [99] |
| Bird and Billy on the fire-escape | [137] |
| “‘They ain’t fer me, fer sure?’” | [158] |
| “‘It means, Lammy Lane, that the Lord don’t forget the orphan’” | [230] |
| “Bird was found at last” | [267] |
Aunt Jimmy’s Will
[I]
RED PINEYS
Bird O’More crouched in a little black heap in the corner of the sofa that stood between the closed windows in the farmhouse sitting room. Her eyes, that looked straight before her, yet without seeing anything, were quite dry; but her feverish cheeks, that she pressed against the cool haircloth, and the twisting of her fingers in the folds of her gown, told of grief, as well as her black frock and the closed blinds.
Outside the house, in the road, half a dozen country teams were hitched to the rickety fence, while their owners roamed about the yard, talking in low voices, and occasionally wondering aloud “when the women folks would be ready to go home.”
But the women folks had no idea of going yet, and small wonder, for they had come from a funeral that had made poor Bird an orphan; they had much to discuss, and without them, also, she would be all alone at the farm that lay on a straggling cross-road a mile from neighbours, as if it, like its recent owners, had tried to hide from those who had known it in better days.
The little girl had been christened Bertha, after her grandmother, but as, from the time she could speak a word, she was always singing, her father had called her “Bird.” Yet this day the little bird in her throat was mute and only made a strange fluttering; so that the neighbours, talking in whispers as they drank the tea that a stout, rosy woman, who seemed to be in charge, was serving in the kitchen, said, “Poor child, if she’d only let go and cry it out natural, it would do her good; but that dry sobbing is enough to break a body’s heart.”