We were orphans. Our names were Lilly and Stella Tresvant. Our father had been killed during the war, and our mother had died of grief. We were little children then, and had been sent to the Island City, Galveston, to live with Aunt Nanny and Uncle David. We thought ourselves quite grown-up now. Since we came to our island home we had never been away from it. It was forlorn enough, though it was a pretty place, all overgrown with oleanders and cape-jessamines. We used to get so tired watching the sea, hearing the restless beat, beat of the waves against the shore, and seeing the far-off birds dip their wings into the water! There was an old book in Uncle David's library that I suppose we had read a dozen times. It was called Rasselas, and was about a young prince and his sister who lived in a Happy Valley, and yet could never be happy until they got away. "I can sympathize with them," Lilly used to say with such a mournful look in her big gray eyes; "and yet what was their case compared to ours? They didn't have to wear their grandmother's clothes made over, I'm very sure."
But the turning came in our long lane. One year Uncle David's crop was uncommonly good. He made a bale to the acre, got it all picked in good time, and the hands paid off without any grumbling. His plantation was in the interior, and just before the cotton was sent off we all went up to have a look at it. There were about fifty bales—a very good crop for these times, though Aunt Nanny declared it wouldn't have been a drop in the bucket "before the war." But it looked like immense wealth to Lilly and myself.
"Only think, Stella!" said Lilly to me: "if we had just a single bale apiece, what a good time we might have!"
Now, it happened that Uncle David overheard this. He was walking about the yard, as silent as usual, but he was holding his spectacles in his hand, and that was with him a sign of great good-humor. We could always tell the state of the cotton-market by the position of Uncle David's spectacles; and, as Mrs. Gargery tied on her apron when upon a "rampage," so uncle jammed his spectacles close to his eyes when things were very much out of joint.
"Well, girls," he said, "you've been pretty good lately, and I'll present you each with a bale of cotton."
We couldn't speak for surprise. But I flew at Uncle David and gave him such a kissing as he had never had from anybody, I suppose, for he blushed quite red.
Then we ran off to the cotton-press to see the last bales pressed. As often as we had watched that revolving screw and the two mules going slowly round squeezing the huge bale—it was rather a primitive press this, made by the carpenter on the place—we had never looked with an interest to compare with that which we now felt. It was our own property being squeezed into shape; and we actually stood there until the bale in press was rolled out, corded and tied. It was a great five-hundred-pounder at least; and "That's mine," said Lil.
When we had been at home a few days a lady called to see us who had been an old friend of our mother's: Mrs. Long was her name. She was sparkling with jewels, and Lil and I were quite dazzled by them and her pretty clothes and her careless way of saying that she thought of "running over to New Orleans for a couple of months," just as we should have proposed to run down to the beach to pick up shells.
"I wish I could take these two girls with me," she said, waving her hand toward Lilly and me. "Would it not be possible, dear Miss Nanny?"
Aunt Nanny shook her head, and began the usual doleful story about the war and its consequences; but Lilly gave me a quick look, and her face absolutely flashed. Then she slyly raised those long slim fingers of hers and spelled out, "The cotton."