“Tell me true,—true as you live and breathe,—ain’t I your sister Milly, and if I ain’t, who am I? Ain’t I anybody? Did I rain down as Maria Stevens said I did?”
A troubled, perplexed expression flitted over the pale face of the boy, and awkwardly smoothing the brown head resting on his patched pantaloons, he answered:
“Who told you that story, Milly; I hoped it would be long before you heard it!”
“Then ’tis true,—’tis true; and that’s why grandma scolds me so, and gives me such stinchin’ pieces of cake, and not half as much bread and milk as I can eat. Oh, dear, oh, dear,—ain’t there anybody anywhere that owns me? Ain’t I anybody’s little girl?” and the poor child sobbed passionately.
It had come to her that day, for the first time, that she was not Mildred Hawkins, as she had supposed herself to be, and coupled with the tale was a taunt concerning her uncertain parentage. But Mildred was too young to understand the hint; she only comprehended that she was nobody,—that the baby Bessy she had seen so often in her dreams was not her sister,—that the gentle, loving woman, who had died of consumption two years before, was nothing but her nurse,—and worse than all the rest, the meek, patient, self-denying Oliver, or Clubs, was not her brother. It was a cruel thing to tell her this, and Maria Stevens would never have done it, save in a burst of passion. But the deed was done, and like a leaden weight Mildred’s heart had lain in her bosom that dreary afternoon, which, it seemed to her, would never end. Anxiously she watched the sunshine creeping along the floor, and when it reached the four o’clock mark, and her class, which was the last, was called upon to spell, she drew a long sigh of relief, and taking her place, mechanically toed the mark, a ceremony then never omitted in a New England school.
But alas for Mildred; her evil genius was in the ascendant, for the first word which came to her was missed, as was the next, and the next, until she was ordered back to her seat, there to remain until her lesson was learned. Wearily she laid her throbbing head upon the desk, while the tears dropped fast upon the lettered page.
“Grandma will scold so hard and make me sit up so late to-night,” she thought, and then she wondered if Clubs would go home without her, and thus prevent her from asking him what she so much wished to know.
But Clubs never willingly deserted the little maiden, and when at last her lesson was learned and she at liberty to go, she found him by the road-side piling up sand with his twisted feet, and humming a mournful tune, which he always sung when Mildred was in disgrace.
“It was kind in you to wait,” she said, taking his offered hand. “You are real good to me;” then, as she remembered that she was nothing to him, her lip began to quiver, and the great tears rolled down her cheeks a second time.
“Don’t, Milly,” said the boy soothingly. “I’ll help you if she scolds too hard.”