"I've told you of the five white birches. I was looking at them and naming them on my fingers the day that Aunt Paula came. My childhood ended there. I seemed to grow up all at once."
Blake muttered something inarticulate. But at her look of inquiry, he merely said. "Go on!"
"She isn't really my aunt by blood,—Aunt Paula isn't. You understand—my father and her husband were brothers. They all died—everybody died but just Aunt Paula and me. So she took me away with her. And after that it was always the dreadful noise and confusion of New York, with only my one doll—black Dinah—a rag-baby. I thought," she interrupted herself wistfully, "I'd send Dinah to you when I got back to New York. Would you like her?"
"Like her—like her! My—my—" But he swallowed his words. "Go on!" He commanded again.
"Afterwards came London and then India. Such education as I had, I got from governesses. I didn't have very much as girls go in my—in my class. I didn't understand that then, any more than I understand why I wasn't allowed to go to school or to play with other girls. There was a time when I rebelled frightfully at that. I can tell definitely just when it began. We were passing a convent in the Bronx, and it was recess time. The sisters in their starched caps were sewing over by the fence, and the girls were playing—a ring game, 'Go in and out the window'—I can hear it now. I crowded my little face against the pickets to watch, and two little girls who weren't in the game passed close to me. The nearest one—I 'm sure I'd know her now if I saw her grown up. She was of about my own age, very dark, with the silkiest black hair and the longest black eyelashes that I ever saw. She had a dimple at one corner of her mouth. She wore on her arm a little bracelet with a gold heart dangling from it. I wasn't allowed any jewelry; and it came into my mind that I'd like a gold bracelet like that, before it came that I'd like such a friend for my very ownest and dearest. The other girl, a red-haired minx who walked with her arm about my girl's waist—how jealous I was of her! I watched until Aunt Paula dragged me away. As I went, I shouted over my shoulder, 'Hello, little girl!' The little dark girl saw me, and shouted back, 'Hello!' Dear little thing. I hope she's grown up safe and very happy! She'll never know what she meant to me!"
Her lips quivered again. Looking up into her face, Blake wondered for an instant at the sudden softness of her eyes. Then he realized that they were slowly filling with tears. He reached again to seize her hands.
"Oh, no, no—wait!" she said, weakly. After a pause, she resumed:
"That got up rebellion in me. All children have such periods, I've heard. I'm docile enough now. But before I was through with this one, Aunt Paula had to make my destiny clear to me—long before she meant to do so. And I grew to be resigned, and then glad, because it was a greater thing."
Here a rapid, inexplicable change crossed her face. From its firmness of health and strength, it fell toward the look of one "called"—
"I must go back again. Between Aunt Paula and me there was always a great sympathy. It's hard to describe. Often we do not have to speak even of the most important things. When I come to know more about other people, I wondered at first why they needed to do so much talking. Things have happened—things that I would not expect you to believe—"