“You dear old Margie! you have come at last;” while kiss after kiss was showered upon the girl, whose golden hair gleamed brightly in the sunlight, and whose blue eyes were full of tears as she returned the greeting.
Suddenly remembering Mrs. La Rue, Queenie turned toward her, and, offering her hand very cordially, utterly ignored the fact that she had ever seen her before by saying:
“I think you are Mrs. La Rue, and I am happy to meet you, because you bring me Margie.”
“Thanks. You are very kind,” Mrs. La Rue replied, with a tone which a stranger might have thought cold and constrained but for the face, which had something eager and almost hungry in its expression, as the great black eyes were riveted upon Queenie whose hand the woman held in a tight clasp until it was wrenched away, as the girl turned next to the Rossiters.
“Wait, Margie,” she said, in passing. “Our carriage is here, and I am going to take you to your new home.”
Then hurrying on she went up to her aunt, and cousins, and the major, who had been watching her curiously, and mentally commenting upon her.
“Quite too much sentiment and gush for me. I like more manner; more dignity,” he thought, while Mrs. Rossiter saw only her sister’s child, and Ethel and Grace felt a little disappointed with regard to the beauty, of which they had heard so much.
But when she came toward them, her head erect, her cheeks flushed, and eyes shining like diamonds and seeming almost to speak as they danced, and laughed, and sparkled, they changed their minds, and when the great tears came with a rush, as she threw herself into Mrs. Rossiter’s arms, exclaiming, “Oh auntie, I am going to love you so much, and you must love me with all my faults, for I have neither father nor mother, now,” they espoused her cause at once, and never for a moment wavered in their allegiance to her. Giving each of them a hand, and kissing them warmly, she said, laughingly: “You are all alike, aren’t you? tall and fair, and blue-eyed—so different from me, who am nothing but a little black midget.”
“That’s the Ferguson of us,” Phil said, with a meaning smile, which brought a flush to his sister’s cheeks, and made Queenie laugh, as she retorted:
“I wish I were a Ferguson then, if that would make me white.”