“Well, wait, till I put on my good dress.”
“Oh, come along! Your dresses are all just alike.”
“Why, Pollio! I’ve got a pink one that’s most whole.”
And she hopped joyfully into the house to put it on. I suppose it had been pink when Edith Pitcher owned it; but Hop-clover had let it lie on the grass so many days and nights, that it was faded and spotted and streaked. Poor child! When people gave her any thing, she did not know how to take care of it.
Pollio thought she was a long while getting ready. He stood on the doorstone whistling, while she scrubbed her face and neck, and smoothed her hair with a comb which had about nine teeth in it. By the time she came out he was cross; but she did not know it. She was thinking how nice it was that somebody “wanted her,” somebody had “sent” for her.
The Quaker kissed her when he saw her. Perhaps she was cleaner and prettier than he had expected; for he kept saying, “Thee looks like a good little girl, a nice little girl. So thee has no mother? How long has she been dead?”
Hop-clover did not know; but Mrs. Pitcher said two years. She did not live very long after the family came to Rosewood.
“Where did thee move from when thee came here, my child?”
“We moved from Ohio.”
“This must be Lucinda Fearing’s child,” said Mr. Littlefield, rising and sitting down again. “Does thee remember how thy mother looked, my dear?”