She touched a little bell on the table beside her, and summoning Luna from the kitchen, bade her bring the portfolio which held sister’s letters.
“There they are; read any of them,” she said.
And more to please the child than from curiosity, Edna did read one of the notes, bearing date six or seven months before, and as she read she felt a growing interest and even liking for Georgie Burton, who, however cold and proud she might be to strangers, showed a deep interest in Annie’s well-being.
One thing struck Edna forcibly, and that was the hope Georgie expressed that her dear little sister would grow up truthful, and break herself of the habit she had of sometimes equivocating. At Annie’s request Edna read the letter aloud, and when she had finished it she saw that Annie’s face was crimson with a look of sorrow and shame.
“I didn’t know as ’twas that one,” she said, “and I don’t want you to hate me. I did use to tell lies, oh, so many”—and the voice sank to a whisper—“and mother spanked me once and wrote it to Georgie, and told me how wicked it was, and I do try not to now, so much, though Jack says I will romance a little, that’s what he calls it, meaning, you know, that I made up some. It’s my blood; I heard Jack tell mother so. Bad blood, he said, though that time I cut my finger so and bleeded so much, it looked like Jack’s did when he had the nose-bleed.”
She had taken the matter literally, and Edna could not repress a smile at her interpretation of bad blood, while she began to wonder how much of this same blood, if any, was in Jack Heyford’s veins. Georgie was only his half-sister she knew, while Annie was still further removed, although she called him brother. Any questions, however, which she might have put to Annie with regard to the relationship, were prevented by the appearance of Luna with the lunch.
It was a very tempting lunch, and Edna felt her lost appetite returning when she saw the oysters fried to just the brown she liked, the slices of rich baked ham, the delicate rolls, home-made and fresh from the oven, the creamy butter, the pot of raspberry jam, and the steaming chocolate which Annie liked so much and was occasionally allowed to drink. A dish of apples and oranges with clusters of rich purple grapes completed the bill of fare, and Annie proved herself a very competent little hostess, as she did the honors of the table and urged the good things upon Edna, who enjoyed it nearly as much as Annie herself, and forgot in part the dark shadow which had fallen upon her life. As if they had been princes lunching in some palatial mansion, old Luna waited upon them, showing a skill and readiness which rather surprised Edna until she heard from the negress herself that she had been a house servant in her late mistress’s family in St. Augustine, Florida, that her duties had been wholly confined to the dining-room and its appointments until three years since, when she came to Mrs. Heyford.
Since then, to use her own words, “she has done little of everything, tend here, tend there, bake, and wash, and iron, and do what only low-lived trash does at home.”
She seemed a very capable, intelligent woman, and evidently regarded “Master Jack and Miss Annie” with feelings amounting almost to adoration. Of Georgie she said but little, and that little showed conclusively her opinion of a young lady “who would turn her back on her own flesh and blood, and never come a nigh even when they sickened and died, just because they was poor and couldn’t give her all the jimcracks she wanted.”
“She was here oncet, two years or so ago,” she said to Edna, who, after lunch, went with her to the kitchen for a moment. “She staid about three weeks, and seemed to think it was such a piece of condescension on her part to do even that. And we waited on her as if she’d been a queen, and Master Jack’s bill for the ices, and creams, and fruit, and carriages, which he got for her was awful, and pinched us for three months or more. I must say though that she took wonderfully to Miss Annie. Never seen anything like it. Don’t understand it, no how, and ’taint none of my business if I did.”