“It is a very great pity that mother married again!” said I.
I am always very outspoken when I am deeply moved. I expected that Cyrus would reprove me. Instead, he walked with hasty strides to and fro across the office, and an unwonted color flamed in his cheeks that were as swarthy, almost, as an Indian’s.
“Those children are chains about our wrists, and they always will be!” he said, almost fiercely.
The screen door was suddenly flung open and the “chains” appeared. They were ten and nine, now, and a pretty pair, with our mother’s blonde coloring. The girl had a vivacity, and they both had a supple grace that made them quite unlike the other Palmyra children, quite unlike what we had been at their age. It seemed un-American and was, perhaps, an inheritance from some remote French ancestor, or at least, from ancestors more accustomed to the gay world than were ours. There was a vague tradition that the artist, their father, was of lofty lineage. I had always felt that this unlikeness of the children to ourselves jarred upon Cyrus and Octavia, while to me it was a fascination.
“We made ourselves in the sawdust,” announced Estelle, “and Dave came fat—as fat as a doughnut boy when he puffs all up in the pan. Perhaps it was because his sawdust was so fine and soft. But his clothes are big and baggy. They don’t fit anyway.”
The child had a fine scowl of scorn between her delicate brows as she looked at Dave’s clothes, which, what with grandma’s conscientious economy and Loveday’s lack of tailor skill, certainly did all that clothes could do to conceal his lithe grace of form.
“I came as lean as a daddy-long-legs,” added Estelle. “This is one of my skimpy dresses. One good thing, it will wear out soon! Loveday said there must be two for me out of every one of Octavia’s. Oh, how I wish Octavia didn’t like purple and green!”
The dress was a cross-barred muslin, ugly of color and design. Octavia was near-sighted, devoted to books, and almost wholly indifferent to dress, and yet with a serene impression that she always looked well and a tendency toward striking effects.
“I’ve got through with the other one like this.” The child heaved a long sigh of relief. “It got a beautiful great tear on a fence nail, so zigzag that even Loveday couldn’t mend it. Oh, Bashie, you will get through with your blue spot soon, won’t you, and the sash! The blue spot is so pretty and your dresses are so nice because they won’t make two!” she said fervently, as she clung to my arm.
I had sometimes had a guilty sense of being too small to suit the household economies, but now I felt a sympathetic satisfaction that there would be but one dress of the blue spot.