“She is so very like her mother. It gave me a shock to see her. Margaret had that same impulsive way. In any one else it would have seemed strained and theatrical, but no one ever thought of it in Margaret. Every one always said, when she did anything a little odd, that it was just like Margaret Dameron. Your father hadn’t any of that; he wasn’t like the rest of the Merriams. He tried to be on good terms with Ezra Dameron, though Ezra never appreciated it; and the rest of them dropped us for countenancing him. But Zelda,—what do you think of her?”
“She didn’t give me time to think. She charmed me! I never saw anybody like her in the world. She has such an air of mystery,—that doesn’t seem just the word, but I don’t know what to call it. She’s adorable! And when we were driving along in the dark and she said she was ‘lonesome, lonesome, lonesome,’ just that way, it made me cry.”
“I’ve heard that she has gone to live with her father. They can have nothing in common. She will hardly be happy with him.”
“I should think not! I can’t imagine her living with him. Yes,—I can imagine her doing anything!”
“I believe I can, too,” said Mrs. Merriam, smiling. “And if she’s disposed to be friendly we mustn’t repel her.”
“No one could refuse an appeal like hers. I’m only afraid she’ll never come back. She’s like a fairy princess. I don’t remember that anything so interesting ever happened to me before. But I must come down to the realities and go and get tea.”
Zelda appeared in a rain-storm early Saturday afternoon. Olive had spent the morning at a teachers’ meeting and hurried through luncheon to be prepared for Zelda in case she should come. Zelda appeared afoot, wrapped in a long rain-coat.
“Don’t be alarmed about me! I’m neither sugar, salt nor anybody’s honey. I never had a cold in my life,” she declared, as the two women exclaimed at her drenched appearance. Olive helped her out of the coat and bore it away to the kitchen, and then took Zelda to her own room, where there was more white woodwork, with draperies of pink and white in the dormer-windows.
“I know; I see through it all; you didn’t really want me to fix my dripping locks, but to see this. Isn’t it too good to be true? It’s like a little room I had once at a place in Italy, only better. It’s very bad form to look; but I’m looking.” Zelda went about peering at pictures, touching draperies swiftly with her hands; and at Olive’s dresser she availed herself of comb and brush and restored her hair with a few strokes. “Now, Cousin Olive, I don’t know what girls have to say to each other when they’re all alone. This is a new experience. So you begin.”
She took a rocking-chair that was covered with chintz of the same pattern as the curtains, and faced Olive, who sat down in a little window seat where there were cushions that matched the chintz. The room was small and cozy. The rain beat on the shingles overhead and against the windows with a soothing monotony.