The Story of Miranda - Complete Trilogy (Marcia Schuyler, Phoebe Deane & Miranda). Grace Livingston Hill

themes. She wondered what Dolly and Debby, the servants at home, would say if they could see her pretty china and the nice kitchen. They had always been fond of her, and naturally her new honors made her wish to have her old friends see her. What would Mary Ann say? What fun it would be to have Mary Ann there sometime. It would be almost like the days when they had played house under the old elm on the big flat stone, only this would be a real house with real sprigged china instead of bits of broken things. Then she fell into a song, one they sang in school,

      “Sister, thou wast mild and lovely,

       Gentle as the summer breeze,

       Pleasant as the air of evening

       When it floats among the trees.”

      But the first words set her to thinking of her own sister, and how little the song applied to her, and she thought with a sigh how much better it would have been, how much less bitter, if Kate had been that way and had lain down to die and they could have laid her away in the little hilly graveyard under the weeping willows, and felt about her as they did about the girl for whom that song was written.

      The work was done, and Marcia arrayed in one of the simplest of Kate’s afternoon frocks, when the brass knocker sounded through the house, startling her with its unfamiliar sound.

      Breathlessly she hurried downstairs. The crucial moment had come when she must stand to meet her new relatives alone. With her hand trembling she opened the door, but there was only one person standing on the stoop, a girl of about her own age, perhaps a few months younger. Her hair was red, her face was freckled, and her blue eyes under the red lashes danced with repressed mischief. Her dress was plain and she wore a calico sunbonnet of chocolate color.

      “Let me in quick before Grandma sees me,” she demanded unceremoniously, entering at once before there was opportunity for invitation. “Grandma thinks I’ve gone to the store, so she won’t expect me for a little while. I was jest crazy to see how you looked. I’ve ben watchin’ out o’ the window all the morning, but I couldn’t ketch a glimpse of you. When David came out this morning I thought you’d sure be at the kitchen door to kiss him good-bye, but you wasn’t, and I watched every chance I could get, but I couldn’t see you till you run out in the garden fer corn. Then I saw you good, fer I was out hangin’ up dish towels. You didn’t have a sunbonnet on, so I could see real well. And when I saw how young you was I made up my mind I’d get acquainted in spite of Grandma. You don’t mind my comin’ over this way without bein’ dressed up, do you? There wouldn’t be any way to get here without Grandma seeing me, you know, if I put on my Sunday clo’es.”

      “I’m glad you came!” said Marcia impulsively, feeling a rush of something like tears in her throat at the relief of delay from the aunts. “Come in and sit down. Who are you, and why wouldn’t your Grandmother like you to come?”

      The strange girl laughed a mirthless laugh.

      “Me? Oh, I’m Mirandy. Nobody ever calls me anything but Mirandy. My pa left ma when I was a baby an’ never come back, an’ ma died, and I live with Grandma Heath. An’ Grandma’s mad ’cause David didn’t marry Hannah Heath. She wanted him to an’ she did everything she could to make him pay ’tention to Hannah, give her fine silk frocks, two of ’em, and a real pink parasol, but David he never seemed to know the parasol was pink at all, fer he’d never offer to hold it over Hannah even when Grandma made him walk with her home from church ahead of us. So when it come out that David was really going to marry, and wouldn’t take Hannah, Grandma got as mad as could be and said we never any of us should step over his door sill. But I’ve stepped, I have, and Grandma can’t help herself.”

      “And who is Hannah Heath?” questioned the dazed young bride. It appeared there was more than a sister to be taken into account.

      “Hannah? Oh, Hannah is my cousin, Uncle Jim’s oldest daughter, and she’s getting on toward thirty somewhere. She has whitey-yellow hair and light blue eyes and is tall and real pretty. She held her head high fer a good many years waitin’ fer David, and I guess she feels she made a mistake now. I noticed she bowed real sweet to Hermon Worcester last Sunday and let him hold her parasol all the way to Grandma’s gate. Hannah was mad as hops when she heard that you had gold hair and blue eyes, for it did seem hard to be beaten by a girl of the same kind? but you haven’t, have you? Your hair is almost black and your eyes are brownie-brown. You’re years younger than Hannah, too. My! Won’t she be astonished when she sees you! But I don’t understand how it got around about your having gold hair. It was a man that stopped at your father’s house once told it——”

      “It was my sister!” said Marcia, and then blushed crimson to think how near she had come to revealing the truth which must not be known.

      “Your sister? Have you got a sister with gold hair?”

      “Yes, he must have seen her,” said Marcia confusedly. She was not used to evasion.

      “How funny!” said Miranda. “Well, I’m glad he did, for it made Hannah so jealous it was funny. But I guess she’ll get a set-back when she sees how young you are. You’re not as pretty as I thought you would be, but I believe I like you better.”

      Miranda’s frank speech reminded Marcia of Mary Ann and made her feel quite at home with her curious visitor. She did not mind being told she was not up to the mark of beauty. From her point of view she was not nearly so pretty as Kate, and her only fear was that her lack of beauty might reveal the secret and bring confusion to David. But she need not have feared: no one watching the two girls, as they sat in the large sunny room and faced each other, but would have smiled to think the homely crude girl could suggest that the other calm, cool bud of womanhood was not as near perfection of beauty as a bud could be expected to come. There was always something child-like about Marcia’s face, especially her profile, something deep and other-world-like in her eyes, that gave her an appearance so distinguished from other girls that the word “pretty” did not apply, and surface observers might have passed her by when searching for prettiness, but not so those who saw soul beauties.

      But Miranda’s time was limited, and she wanted to make as much of it as possible.

      “Say, I heard you making music this morning. Won’t you do it for me? I’d just love to hear you.”

      Marcia’s face lit up with responsive enthusiasm, and she led the way to the darkened parlor and folded back the covers of the precious piano. She played some tender little airs she loved as she would have played them for Mary Ann, and the two young things stood there together, children in thought and feeling, half a generation apart in position, and neither recognized the difference.

      “My land!” said the visitor, “’f I could play like that I wouldn’t care ef I had freckles and no father and red hair,” and looking up Marcia saw tears in the light blue eyes, and knew she had a kindred feeling in her heart for Miranda.

      They had been talking a minute or two when the knocker suddenly sounded through the long hall again making both girls start. Miranda boldly tiptoed over to the front window and peeped between the green slats of the Venetian blind to see who was at the door, while Marcia started guiltily and quickly closed the instrument.

      “It’s David’s aunts,” announced Miranda in a stage whisper hurriedly. “I might ’a’ known they would come this afternoon. Well, I had first try at you anyway, and I like you real well. May I come again and hear you play? You go quick to the door, and I’ll slip into the kitchen till they get in, and then I’ll go out the kitchen door and round the house out the little gate so Grandma won’t see me. I must hurry for I ought to have been back ten minutes ago.”

      “But you haven’t been to the store,” said Marcia in a dismayed whisper.

      “Oh, well, that don’t matter! I’ll tell her they didn’t have what she sent me for. Good-bye. You better hurry.” So saying, she disappeared into the kitchen; and Marcia, startled by such easy morality, stood dazed until the knocker sounded forth again, this time a little more peremptorily, as the elder aunt took her turn at it.

      And so at last Marcia was face to face with the Misses Spafford.