At Laurelville, to be sure, people spoke in two ways. The real country folk had a vigorous, if homely, dialect, such as the Lanes spoke, while Dr. Jedd, the minister, and her father and mother used a purer speech, though her father alone had the soft, distinct way of pronouncing the words that was one of Bird’s great attractions.
Little Billy, however, was quite at home with this street language, as far as understanding it went, but no word of it came from his baby lips, strangely enough, and though he was really over six years old, he had the slight frame and innocent, open-eyed gaze of a child of four, and he was entirely “different like” from the rest of his family, as his mother said, and it provoked her as if the fact of the child’s being apart from her own rudeness was a personal reproach.
“Hullo, Billy,” called a freckled, lanky-looking girl of perhaps fifteen,—reading by her face, though she was no taller than Bird,—who was coming across the street from a grocer’s carefully carrying a bottle of milk as if it was a rare possession.
“Hello, Mattie,” he answered cheerfully, hopping to the curb to meet her. “Where’ve you been? I thinked you moved away.”
“I’ve been working all of two weeks, and we moved right in back of your house yesterday. We’ve got two fine rooms now, and I buy Tessie a bottle of milk every morning now my own self,” she said proudly.
“Tessie’s legs are very bad again, and I can’t get her out except Sundays when mother’s at home to help, but she’s got a rocking-chair and she can pull it all round the room an’ see up out the winder to your ’scape. We seen you sittin’ up there last night. Who’s the girl?” she added, dropping her voice as Bird drew near to Billy, not knowing how he went about alone and fearful lest he should fall.
“It’s Bird, my cousin; she came last night from the far-away country,” he answered, clinging to Bird’s hand, while the two girls looked at each other, one shyly and the other—city bred and quick-witted—curiously, noticing at once the plain black gown.
“Come to visit or stop?” she asked presently.
“I’ve come to stay,” said Bird, slowly, only half realizing the truth of the words.