“Well, they didn’t name you Despair,” she laughed, “so don’t try and play they did. It’s most time Lady was back, isn’t it?”
Jim nodded and looked down the street toward the village a half-mile away. “That’s her now, I guess; away down by the big elm; see?”
“Yes, it is. Let’s go and meet her, Jim. She’s probably got a lot of things to carry.”
“All right!” Jim laid down the screw-driver and pushed the ladder aside. “You’d better put a hat on, though.”
“Nonsense! The sun won’t hurt me. Come on.”
They went out of the gate together, and walked briskly down the sidewalk. Jim was half a head taller than his sister, rather thin, a bit raw-boned, in fact, but strong looking, and good looking, too, in spite of a smudge of dirt across his forehead and a generally begrimed appearance due to the fact that he had been sign-painting, carpentering, and house-cleaning all the forenoon. Besides this, he wore the very oldest clothes he owned, and that he managed to look prepossessing in spite of these handicaps speaks rather well for him. He had brown hair and brown eyes, but the hair was light, extremely light in places, as though it had been faded by sun and weather, and the eyes were very dark. Hope had told him once that he had perfectly lovely eyes, they looked so much like sweet chocolate! For the rest, Jim was tanned and hardy-looking, with more often than not a little puckery frown on his forehead, for at sixteen years of age he had already been head of the family for three years.
Hope Hazard isn’t quite so easily described, and I’d flunk the task if I might. She was fourteen, slender, golden-haired, gray-eyed, light-hearted. As Jim had said, she had been well named, for hopefulness was the key-note of her nature, and Jim, who was somewhat prone to borrow trouble if he had none of his own, called her frivolous in moments of exasperation. But Hope came honestly by her sunny optimism, for her mother had always been the most hopeful, cheerful soul in the world, and even Mr. Hazard’s death and the immediate collapse of the family fortunes had failed to change her.
Mother and daughter looked much alike. Mrs. Hazard was quite tall, still young looking, and still pretty. She had gray eyes, like Hope’s, and if they were a trifle more faded, they still twinkled brightly at the slightest provocation. Jim was more like his father, a little more serious, with something of New England granite showing in his face, a heritage from a race of coast-dwelling Hazards. The Hazard nose, which Hope fondly believed she had inherited, and which was a straight and stern appendage, well shaped but uncompromising, was his, while Mrs. Hazard’s nose was an undignified, even flippant affair that looked for all the world as though, had it had proper encouragement at an early stage, it would have become tip-tilted. Truth compels the admission that in Hope’s case the Hazard nose was more a matter of anticipation than realization, in spite of the fact that she religiously pulled it and pinched it in the attempt to make it conform to Hazard requirements. Perhaps it is a mean thing to say, but Hope’s nose was more remarkable for the cluster of three big freckles on the end of it than for beauty of contour.
Mrs. Hazard yielded her packages to the children and gave an account of her shopping expedition. “It’s lots of fun buying things in Crofton, my dears; quite exciting. You never know when you ask for a thing what you are going to get. I tried to buy some scrim to make curtains for Jane’s room, and what do you suppose I got? Why, some muslin for a next summer dress for Hope! It was really very sweet and pretty.”