She was a pretty creature, not with a regular and easily defined prettiness, but with a charm of feature, coloring and expression that was more potent than orthodox beauty. She had brown hair, that in the shade looked the color of a ripe chestnut. In the sun it turned a splendid copper color, as if the chestnut had blazed up in the brazier. It was hair all crinkles and wrinkles, trying to curl as nature meant it to, and as its owner distinctly meant it not to curl. It waved around rosy cheeks in which the dimples came and went so fast that they looked as if they too were curly, like the hair, and it shaded brown eyes that could laugh and flash and cloud sorrowfully, but which ordinarily shone with a warm, steady light that put one in mind of a glowing hearth fire. Happie could not have had a more appropriate name than her nickname, for she was a veritable ray of sunshine, brave and cheerful and unselfish, good with that natural tendency to noble aims and thoughts that seems in rare natures to be at one with the tendency of flowers to clothe themselves in fragrance and beauty. She could get angry, and sometimes did, but she never could do unkind or mean things; she was a loyal, pure-hearted, clever little woman of fourteen, with so many talents that she had no special one, and her mother felt that when the time came for her to earn her bread, as all the Scollards must do, it might be hard to decide for what too-versatile Happie was best fitted.
Just now [this sunny little maiden was bending absorbed over the gas range], her face decidedly red, her sweet lips deserving the epithet for purely external reasons, as well as for their pleasant curves, while her right hand stirred the mixture in a pan which her left hand slightly lifted above the circular blue flame.
Margery—Margaret—reclined against the drop shelf which was the space-economizing substitute for a kitchen table. She was a graceful young creature, with a serious look on her madonna-like face, brought there by her early acquaintance with responsibility and anxiety.
Bob, next to Margery in seniority, sat astride of the only chair the tiny kitchen admitted. A fine, square-shouldered specimen of a boy nearing sixteen he was; open-browed, bright-eyed, overflowing with fun, yet with a certain steadiness of manner that spoke him trustworthy, as became a boy who had been left the head of a family by his father's death four years before.
Laura, Happie's successor in the birth record of the family Bible, toyed elegantly with a fork, but cast rapid, furtive glances at the fudge, betraying the shallowness of the indifference which an over-weening sense of the dignity of her twelve years impelled her to assume. She was a pale, thin girl, with a discontented and sensitive mouth, and an abundance of foolish affectations that made her seem like an alien among the cheerful, sensible young Scollards.
Mary—Polly, as she was always called, was the most stolidly sensible little creature of the family. A round-faced, broad-browed, sweet-tempered, plump little body was Polly, never in anybody's way, always to be relied upon for an errand, very fond of housewifely tasks of which she assumed her full share in the household, though she boasted but nine years of age.
Penelope, baby Penny, ended the Scollard list, winding up the ranks at four years, an imaginative, lively little person, not prone to scrapes, but fond of mischief, and with an ability to amuse and to take care of herself remarkable, considering there were five older children ready and glad to spoil her with petting.
The sensitive, delicate mother of this flock had been left a widow when Penny was a wee baby. There had been nothing for her gifted, impractical husband to leave her but the memory of a perfect love and a beautiful life, spent rather in the pursuit of ideals than of money. Without a murmur this woman, strong of soul, though weak of body, had taken up the burden of her profound grief and the support of her children. She had many accomplishments, and her knowledge of languages stood her in good stead. Every day she journeyed down the subway from her fourth floor nest in an up-town apartment house, and earned her own and her children's bread as the foreign correspondent of a large firm, coming back weary every night during the hardest hours of the crowded subway travel to her flat, where, after the dinner which her children had prepared, she spent each evening giving them the lessons for which she could no longer afford teachers. It was not strange that the Scollards worshiped their mother with the love she so richly deserved, the love of recognition of a noble woman, as well as the natural love of children for their mother.
Happie's fudge boiled up suddenly, and suddenly Laura spoke, breaking a silence that had lasted for several minutes.
"I think I should like to be called Laure," she said.