“Oh, can we?” said Bird, clasping her hands involuntarily with her old gesture that expressed more joy than she could speak.
At the sound of the second voice, the young girl pushed back the brim of her drooping, rose-trimmed hat and looked up with clear, gray eyes. As she did so Bird recognized her as Marion Clarke, the daughter of the man who spent his summers in the stone house on the hillside beyond Northboro, and it was she who had passed Bird and Lammy on the roadside the day when she had left her old home and, carrying Twinkle, was going to Mrs. Lane’s.
But if Bird recognized Marion, the memory was on one side, as it is apt to be where one sees but few faces and the other many. This however did not prevent Marion from holding out her free hand to the younger girl, as she made room for her to pass between the boxes, saying, in a charming voice, low-keyed and softly modulated, yet without a touch of affectation: “If you are fond of flowers and can spare the time, perhaps you would help us this morning; so many of our friends have left the city that we are short-handed. Here is a little box your brother can sit on if he is tired.” Oh, that welcome touch of companionship, and that voice,—it made Bird almost choke, as she said:—
“Billy is my cousin, and I should love to tie the flowers, for Aunt Rose does not expect us back until noon.”
It was one of Marion Clarke’s strong points, young as she was, that she had insight as well as tact. She saw at a glance that these children were not of the ordinary class that play about the streets, interested in every passing novelty, merely because it is new, so she had given Bird a friendly greeting and asked her to help, instead of merely offering the children a bouquet and letting them pass on as objects of charity, no matter how light the gift.
When Bird replied in direct and courteous speech, Marion knew that she had read aright. An ordinary street child of that region would have said, “I dunno ’s I will,” or “What ’ll ye give me ’f I do?” or perhaps declined wholly to answer and bolted off after grabbing a handful of flowers.
“Aunt Laura, will you let us have some string? There, see, it is cut in lengths, so that you can twist it around twice and tie it so. I do wish people would tie up their flowers before they send them, they would keep so much better; but as they do not, we have to manage as best we may.
“Oh, how nicely you do it,” she continued, as Bird held up her first effort for approval,—a dainty bouquet of mignonette, a white rose, and some pink sweet-william, with a curved spray of honeysuckle to break the stiffness.
“So many people put the wrong colours together, and tie the flowers so tight that it seems as if it must choke the dear things,—see, like this,” and Marion held up a bunch in which scarlet poppies and crimson roses were packed closely together without a leaf of green.
“Yes, I understand; those colours—hurt,” Bird answered, groping for a word and finding exactly the right one.