The brown eyes winked away the tears and blazed scornfully up at the face above her. "Keep it yourself! You need it!" she growled savagely, pushing the extended hand away from her so fiercely that the candy was scattered all about the floor, and without a backward glance, she flounced out of the store.
"Well, I vum!" exclaimed the astonished clerk. "Next time I"ll let her bawl." Stooping over to collect the hapless chocolate drops before they should be tramped upon, he began to whistle, and the notes followed Peace out on the street--just a bar of her sunshine song, but the woe-begone face brightened a bit, although the girl said to herself, "Oh, dear, seems "sif that song chases me wherever I go. I get it sung or whistled or spoke at me a dozen times a day. And it"s hard work always to remember it, "specially when folks go off and forget all about you when you"ve just been counting the _days_ till "twas time to go home and see Allee and grandpa after being away so long. S"posing I should die "fore they get back, I wonder how they"ll feel. Why, Peace Greenfield, you hateful little tike! Ain"t you ashamed of yourself? Yes, I am. Of course they didn"t run away a-purpose. Grandpa didn"t know he had to go until an hour "fore the train went, and there wasn"t time to send for me and get my clo"es ready to go, too. It was awful nice of him to think of taking the girls and grandma to the Pine Woods to get real well and rested while he did up his business in Dolliver. They"ll come back lots better than they"d be if they had to stay here through all this hot.
"Think of being shut up three months in the house so"s they couldn"t plant gardens or go flower-hunting, or have picnics, or even go to school! I"ve been doing all those things while they"ve been sick. I"m truly "shamed of myself to be so cross about their going off. Elizabeth and Saint John are just the dearest people to me, and the Lilac Lady really cried tears in her eyes when she thought I was going to leave here Monday. She"ll be glad to know that I am to stay two or three weeks longer. And it will be such fun to get letters from the girls in the woods all the while they are gone. After all, I b"lieve I"ll have a better time here anyway."
The cloud had pa.s.sed over without the threatened storm, and the round face, though still a little sober, looked quite contented again. But during this silent soliloquy, the young philosopher had been wandering aimlessly through the streets, without any thought of the direction she was taking, and was suddenly roused from her revery by the mingled shouts and laughter of a throng of boys and girls playing noisily in a great yard fenced in by tall iron pickets.
"Why, school is closed for the summer!" murmured Peace to herself, pressing her face against the iron bars in order that she might watch the lively games on the other side of the palings. "Elizabeth says all the Martindale schools close at the same time. What can these children be doing here then? P"raps this is where the old lady who lived in a shoe had to move to when the shoe got too small for her fambly. Do you s"pose it is?"
"Yup, I guess that"s how it happened," answered a voice close beside her, and she jumped almost out of her shoes in her surprise, for unconsciously she had spoken her thoughts aloud, and a merry-faced urchin, sprawled in the shade of a low-limbed box-elder, had answered her. His peal of delight at having startled her so brought another lad and two girls to see the cause of his glee, and Peace was shocked to behold in the smaller of the girls her own double, only the stranger child was dressed in a long blue ap.r.o.n, which made her look much older than she really was. As the children stood staring at each other through the close-set pickets, the boy in the gra.s.s discovered the likeness of the two faces, and with a startled whoop sat up to ask excitedly of Peace, "Did you ever have a twin?"
"No."
"Oh, dear, I was sure you must have! You"re just the _yimage_ of Lottie.
She"s a _norphan_, and the folks that brought her here didn"t even know what her real name was or anything about her, and we"ve always "magined that some day her truly people would come and find her and she"d have a mother of her own."
"Is this a--a school?" asked Peace. She wanted to say orphan asylum, but was afraid it would be impolite, and she did not wish to offend any of these friendly appearing children.
"It"s the Children"s Home."
"Who owns it?"
"Why--er--I don"t know," stammered the second youth, who seemed the oldest of the quartette inside the fence.
"I guess the splintered ladies do," remarked the cherub in the gra.s.s.
"The wh-at?"
"Tony"s trying to be smart now," said the larger girl scornfully. "The Lady Board is meeting today, and he always calls them the splintered ladies."
"What is a Lady Board?" inquired mystified Peace, thinking this was the queerest home she had ever heard tell of.
"Why, they are the ladies who say how things shall be done here--"
"The number of times we can have b.u.t.ter each week and how much milk each of us can drink, and the number of potatoes the cook shall fix," put in the boy called Tony.
"Don"t you have b.u.t.ter every day!" cried Peace in shocked surprise.
"Well, I guess not! We have it Sunday noons and sometimes holiday nights."
"And we never have sugar on our oatmeal, or sauce to eat with our bread," added Lottie, shaking her curls dolefully.
"What do you eat, then?"
"Oh, bread and milk, and mush of some kind, or rice, and potatoes and vegetables and meat once a week and pie or pudding real seldom."
"Who takes care of you?" asked Peace again after a slight pause.
"The matron and nurses."
"What"s a matron?"
"The boss of the caboose," grinned Tony irreverently.
"Is she nice?"
"That"s what we"re waiting to find out. She"s just come, you see, and we don"t know her real well yet. The other one was a holy fright."
"But the new one _looks_ nice," said Lottie loyally. "She smiles all the time, and Miss Cooper never did. She always looked froze."
"She must be like Miss Peyton. She was my teacher at Chestnut School and I didn"t like her a bit till the day school ended. She did get thawed out then, though, and I b"lieve she"ll be nicer after this."
"Do you live near here?" asked Tony, thinking it was their turn to ask questions of this debonair little stranger, who evidently belonged to rich people, because her brown curls were tied back with a huge pink ribbon, a dainty white pinafore covered her pretty gingham dress, and her feet were shod in patent leather slippers.
"No, grandpa"s house is three miles away, but I am staying at the Hill Street parsonage." Briefly she explained how it had all come about, and the story seemed like a fairy tale to the four eager listeners.
"Then you are an orphan, too," cried Tony triumphantly, when she had finished. "How do you know Lottie ain"t your twin sister?"
""Cause there never were any twins in our family, and if there had been, do you s"pose mother"d have let one loose like that, to get put in a Children"s Home? I guess not!"
"Maybe she"s a cousin, then."
"We haven"t got any. Papa was the only child Grandpa Greenfield had, and mother"s only brother died when he was little."
"But Lottie"s just the _yimage_ of you," insisted Tony, bent on discovering some tie of relationship between the two.
"I can"t help that. I guess it"s just a queerity, though I"d like to find out I had some sure-enough cousins which I didn"t know anything about. Besides, Lottie is lots darker than me. Her hair is black and so are her eyes. Least I guess they are what you"d call black. Mine are only brown."
"You"re the same size. Ain"t they, Ethel?" asked the older lad.
"Yes, that was what I was thinking. I don"t believe many folks would know them apart if they changed clothes."
"Oh, let"s do it!" cried Peace, charmed with the suggestion. "We"ve got a book at home that tells how a little beggar boy changed places with a prince, and they had the strangest "xperiences! It"ll be lots of fun to fool the others. They haven"t been paying any "tention to our talking here. Where"s the gate?"
"At the other side of the yard. There"s only one--"
"But visitors aren"t allowed to come and play with us without a permit from the matron," began the larger boy, cautiously.
"Oh, bother, George," Tony cried impatiently. "We can"t get a permit now with all the Lady Boards here, and you know it."
"Why not?" asked Peace.
""Cause Miss Chase is busy with them in the parlors and we can"t see her till they are gone."
"How long will that be?"
"Oh, hours, maybe."
"Then I"ll come in now and get my permit later."