Flaxie pondered upon this speech as she sat rattling along in the cars, munching peanuts, while Mrs. Prim took care of the shells.
“Troublesome. Oh, my! ’s if I ever troubled anybody! ’Cept Grandma Gray; and that’s ’cause she’s got something in her back. But mamma always thinks Milly is nicer than me! Queer what makes mammas never like their own little girls!—I mean, not much. Now Aunt Charlotte thinks I’m the nicest. She scolds to Milly sometimes, but she don’t scold to ME!”
Hilltop had been green when Flaxie left it, but now it was white, and seemed lovelier than ever, for Johnny had a new sled, and was “such a kind-hearted boy!” That is, he was always ready to draw the twin cousins on the ice till they were half frozen and begged him to stop, and I hardly see how he could have been kinder than that!
Then the school was “perfickly elegant,” taught by that same dear teacher, Miss Pike. What if her nose was red, and her mouth so large that little Betty Chase called her “the lady that can’t shut her face”? She was just lovely for all that, and Flaxie and Milly couldn’t forget that she had saved the schoolhouse when it was set on fire by mistake. After that she hadn’t looked homely a minute,—only “a beautiful homely,” that is ever and ever so much better than handsome;—and the little girls fairly adored her.
Now Flaxie was quick to learn, but as a general thing she didn’t study very hard, I am obliged to confess. When she couldn’t spell her lessons she said to Milly, “It’s ’cause you don’t have the same kind of books we have where I live. The words look so queer in your books!”
If Flaxie was noisy at Laurel Grove, what was she at Hilltop? Sometimes in the evening, when she played the piano and sang, Aunt Charlotte was really afraid she would disturb Mrs. Hunter, who lived in the other half of the house.
“Oh, I like it,” said Mrs. Hunter, pleasantly; “but don’t you think, Mrs. Allen, there is danger of her pounding your piano in pieces?”
But by and by there wasn’t so much time for music and play. The busy season had begun, when everybody was making ready for Christmas; and the twin cousins had as much as they could do in talking over what they were going to do, as they sat in each other’s lap and looked at their work-baskets.
Flaxie wanted to make a marvellous silk bedquilt for her dear mamma out of pieces as big as a dollar; but, finding there wouldn’t be time for that, concluded to buy her a paper of needles, “if it didn’t cost too much.”
Probably there wouldn’t have been anything done but talking if Aunt Charlotte hadn’t brought out some worsteds and canvas and set the helpless little ones at work upon a holder called the “Country Cousin.” They had a hard time over this young lady, and almost wished sometimes that she had never been born; but she turned out very brilliant at last, in a yellow skirt, red waist, and blue bonnet, with a green parasol over her head. After this they had courage to make some worsted balls for the babies, some cologne mats for their brothers who never used cologne, and some court-plaster cases for somebody else, with the motto, “I stick to you when others cut you.”