At the memory, Marise's heart gave a great homesick throb. How far away
she was from Cousin Hetty and Ashley now! How long since she had sat on
anybody's lap.
And yet when Maman came to take you away, from the first minute she went
in and looked around her, you could see right through her eyes and what
you saw was something different. After all it was just a homely old
house with ugly crocheted tidies on the chairs, and splashers done in
outline stitch back of the wash-stands, and old red figured carpets on
the floors, the way _no_body did at home in Belton. And Cousin Hetty
talking so queer and Vermonty, her white hair smoothed down flat over
her ears instead of all roughed up, fluffy, over a rat the pretty way
other ladies did, with her funny clothes, her big cameo pin holding down
her little flat round collar, and all other ladies so stylish with high
collars under their ears. Yes, of course, the minute Maman looked at
her, you saw how ashamed you'd be of Cousin Hetty if she came to visit
your school at Belton. And yet there _was_ the other Cousin Hetty you'd
been having such a good time with. You just flickered away from Maman's
way of seeing it to yours and never could make up your mind which was
the real way.
Marise shook her head, drew a long breath and looked down again at her
spelling lesson. It was a list of the names of furniture and household
utensils, all very familiar to her from old Jeanne's thinking them so
terribly important. My! How much more Jeanne cared about her work than
any girl they'd ever had in Belton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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