"There is no mistake about it, the name of Pink just fits her," said the older sisters to each other, "with her pink and white complexion, and her sweet, prim little mouth, and her dainty ways."
Laura took delight in conducting her new favorite all over the house and premises. Pink trod timidly on the soft rugs that half disguised the floors; caught her breath over the rose-bud chintzes covering easy-chairs and quaint couches, or falling as curtains; touched awe-struck the piano, the pictures, and trinkets. Laura was half pleased and half surprised to see her so impressed.
It was not until a rainy day came that Laura found time to show Pink her most personal possessions. Then she strewed her room with countless pretty things that she had herself packed—her box of ribbons, her pet books, some of last year's Christmas presents, her new locket, her box of paints, her ivory brushes, her painted fan, the souvenirs she brought from Cuba last winter, the long white feather for her summer hat, the needles which she used in doing her pretty fancy-work, their patterns and crewels.
"Oh, what a quantity of things!" cried Pink; "are they all yours?"
"Yes, indeed," answered Laura; "everything in this trunk is my own, very own property, and next time I come to your house I want you to show me yours."
When Pink went home she looked soberly round, and surveyed everything by a new standard. The little house was clean, but it was bare. It contained things to live with, that was all; none of the lovely useless things to which Laura had always been accustomed; none of the separate possessions in which she abounded. Pink could not think what she in her turn was to produce and show to Laura as her own property. By this time Laura knew all about the strawberry patch in which Pink gloried, because it was bearing this year for the first time; all about the flower garden alongside of it, where mignonette, hollyhock, cockscomb, and marigold were flourishing so brightly. She knew about the pine parlor up in the wood, where Pink loved to play by the hour, and the birch bower with moss cushions, where vines had been trained, and where Pink liked to learn her lessons, or read the Pilgrim's Progress. She knew where Pink found cresses by the brook, her favorite places for picking berries, and many of the spots where particular favorites among the wild flowers always waited for Pink to come and get them. But, after all, none of these places belonged, as her property, solely to Pink.
"And my tame robin died last fall," mused Pink, "and my lamb grew so large he had to be sold. But I know—oh, I do know, after all."
Pink clapped her hands softly; she had arrived at the answer to her question. She opened the corner cupboard, and took down the darling of her heart—an old sugar bowl, fat, low, and also appropriately pink.
"You dear old thing! I haven't looked at you for ever so long," said Pink.
Nobody knew, so Pink's mother said, how old this sugar bowl might be. It had been in the family when great-grandmother Brown was a little girl, and they called it old then. It had come down through the Aldens. Grandmother Brown was an Alden.