Children of the rich -- Juvenile fiction; Friendship -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction; Summer -- Juvenile fiction
Silva Burle was a slender brown girl. She did not look any older than
Rosie; but she was much taller--and she was as tawny as Rosie was dark.
Her hair, a strange amber color, hung straight to her shoulders where
the ends turned upwards, not in a curl, but in a big soft wave. Her
eyes were not big but they were long; they were like bits of shining
amber set under her thin straight brows. Her skin was a tanned amber
too. She wore a much-patched rusty dark skirt with a white middy
blouse, a tattered, yellow-ribbon tie.
Tyma, her brother, was slim too but strong-looking, active. He had a
dark skin and hair so black that there was a purple steeliness about
it. In all this swarthy coloring, his eyes, a clear blue, seemed
strange and unexpected. His brows were thick and they lowered as the
eyes under them contemplated the group of children. Silva’s lips curled
disdainfully upwards.
Silva nodded briefly when her aunt performed the simple introduction,
“This is Maida and her friends, Silva,” but Tyma merely stared. Then
turning his back, he strolled away to where the horses were feeding;
untethered one of them. With a single leap of his athletic body, he
was on its back. In another instant, the green leaves of the forest
closed around him as he disappeared riding bare-back into it.
“What beautiful baskets you have Silva!” Maida said politely.
Silva did not deign to answer. She spread her handiwork out on
the table which stood not far from the fire and then, leaving her
prospective customers to their choice, went over to the fire; sat down
before it, her back to the children.
Aunt Save seemed to feel dimly that something was wrong. She moved over
to the table and began displaying the baskets.
Maida made an effort to relieve her embarrassment. “Oh Aunt Save,” she
said, “what do you suppose is the first thing I am going to do when I
get time?” Without waiting for an answer, she went swiftly on. “I’m
going to wash and iron all Lucy’s clothes and pack them nicely away in
a little old hair-cloth trunk which I found in the attic. Lucy,” she
explained to her friends, “is a great big rag-baby doll that Aunt Save
made for me when I was little. It’s as big as a baby two years old. I
was fonder of it than any doll I have ever had, and so Granny Flynn
made it a whole outfit of clothes--all the things a baby should have.
I am going to pack them away and keep them for my daughter.”
“Oh, do you mean that rag-baby doll that’s sitting in the little chair
in your room?” Rosie asked. “And that little queer brown trunk under
the window where the tree is?”
This slant of the conversation seemed to interest Silva for she turned
a little; listened intently to what followed.
“Yes, that’s Lucy,” Maida answered. “All her clothes are in that trunk.”
“When I made that doll for you,” Aunt Save said, “I didn’t think you’d
play with it long. None of us thought you were going to live.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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