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Pearl and Periwinkle
BY
ANNA GRAETZ
[Illustration: Emblem]
L. B. C.
Col. O.
1917
CONTENTS
Chapter I
Page
Myra's Dreadful Children 5
Chapter II
Pigs, Cabbages and--Mr. Robert Grey 11
Chapter III
At the Shrine of Joe Smith 19
Chapter IV
The Clan 29
Chapter V
The Wall that Parted 37
Chapter VI
Joe Smith's Choice 41
Chapter VII
Periwinkle Breaks the Ice 49
Chapter VIII
"Even Unto Bethlehem" 55
CHAPTER I
MYRA'S DREADFUL CHILDREN
Miss Hetty Maise, having spent the night in fitful spells of slumber, at
last awakened by the beams of sunlight, sat up in bed with a start,
quite unrefreshed and possessed of an uncomfortable feeling that
something unpleasant was about to happen. A venturesome sunbeam, casting
its light upon a picture on the heavy walnut dresser, seemed to recall
the cause of her sleepless night and present uneasy state of mind.
Drawing her lips tightly together she frowned severely at the
inquisitive intruder.
"Those children," she thought, "Myra's dreadful children! If the
minister himself hadn't insisted that it was my plain duty to take them
I shouldn't have done it. It seems almost a sin to take in two children
who have been circus performers."
Miss Hetty was up by this time, for she hated to be idle. In fact the
minister's son had once remarked that she was accustomed to stir her
cake batter while she was reading her Bible; but then the minister's son
was inclined to be irreverent at times.
But even he would have felt sorry for Miss Hetty this morning. To adopt
two children when you know nothing whatever about their care was by no
means a pleasant prospect. Besides, these children were the son and
daughter of the outcast of the family, an only sister half-forgotten
though only two months deceased. The thing itself was pathetic, yet it
seemed an imposition: above all to adopt two children who had traveled
all their young lives with a circus was at least to Miss Hetty's mind
almost scandalous.
Often during the morning she absently folded her hand and in
unaccustomed idleness gazed, as if dazed, down the quiet village street
as if expecting help from that source. Once, having aroused herself, she
had gone to an old trunk, her deceased mother's, and drew out two faded
pictures tied with an old ribbon and folded over a lock of yellow hair.
The first picture, the face of a girl that smiled up at her so sweetly
and trustingly, caused unbidden tears to well up in her eyes, just as it
had always affected her mother. The second picture was regarded with
more interest though with less affection. Here was the same loved face,
but beside it the merry, dark face of the actor husband for whom she had
left her home, and in her arms their first baby branded--as Miss Hetty
thought--with the heathenish name of Periwinkle. A letter had
accompanied this photograph, but it had never been answered. Several
years later another letter had been received, telling of the death of
her husband and of the illness of Periwinkle's two year old sister,
Pearl.
Though Myra had died but two months before and if perhaps then her
younger sister had felt any pang of pity for the orphaned children, it
did not enter her thoughts this morning. She plumped up the pillows on
the prim horsehair sofa, painfully recalling the pillow fight she had
once seen between her cousin's children. Children were a nuisance, and
these two--Myra's dreadful boy and girl--were bound to be more than
that.
Her sense of indignation reaching a higher pitch every minute, she
spitefully slammed the front door and left the house just as the clock
struck eleven. Her heels clicked on the sidewalk sharply in full
sympathy with her state of mind as she walked down the street of the
village. And then, as she might have expected, she met the one person
whom she least of all desired to meet. An icy stare on her part, a stiff
formal bow from the man passing--that was all, but she knew that in that
brief interval he had had ample opportunity to observe that she was
worried and cross and looked every day of her twenty-nine lonely years;
and of course it could not but give him much satisfaction. This
disturbing thought crowded out the remembrance of the unloved, unwelcome
niece and nephew until a sharp curve in the road brought into view the
smoke begrimed depot and, drawn up before it, the train which had just
come to a puffing, throbbing standstill like a wild horse unwilling to
pause in its mad race.
Several of Miss Hetty's acquaintances, gathered on the station platform,
were not accorded the usual recognition, for her eyes were fixed
intently on the childish pair alighting from the train. The one, a tall,
slender lad of about thirteen, with curls of golden yellow hair
clustering over a broad forehead, a mouth whose sensitive delicately
modeled lips together with the shadowy depths of deep grey eyes
indicated even in one so young the temperament of a dreamer, first
engaged her attention. But little Pearl! Hair black as night when only
one star is shining and eyes like the double image of that star; a
figure as tiny as the dream of a fairy: that was Pearl.
It was not her childish charm however that made Miss Hetty gasp. It was
the enormous bow, half covering her head, and the butterfly comb that
caught back her curls. The ribbon seemed larger than the silk frock
buoyant with many skirts and quite abbreviated, while the little
high-heeled shoes seemed designed for anything rather than wear.
For a time the children stood quite alone on the platform. Their first
appearance had held Miss Hetty spellbound at her position near the door.
She felt rather than heard a suppressed chuckle run through the small
crowd. Then suddenly her gaze met a pair of compelling brown eyes, not
cold and scrutinizing as they had been when their owner had passed her a
short time before, but sympathetic and friendly. She blushed furiously
and, quickly walking toward the forlorn pair, extended to each a cold
hand of welcome.
"Come Periwinkle, come Pearl," she said, not ungently. "I am your Aunty
Hetty and have come to take you home." And holding her head high and her
eyes straight ahead, she lead the strange pair past the tall gentlemen
on the platform.
"Do you know, Aunt Hetty, I thought it was you," said the boy eagerly as
they left the station. "You look a little like our mother did. She told
us lots about you, and so did the Fat Woman."
"The fat woman," exclaimed Miss Hetty somewhat in surprise. "Who is
she?"
"She looked after us," replied Pearl in a voice so sweet that in spite
of her aversion to her duty Miss Hetty's heart began to warm to her
unwelcome charges. "Even while mother was living she cared for us, and
she told us all we know. She got me all my clothes. She was so jolly and
nice, and so was Mr. Barleydon, and I didn't want to leave the circus, I
didn't, but Periwinkle did."
"Why did Periwinkle want to leave," asked Miss Hetty, now becoming much
interested, although she did purse up her lips when she spoke the
obnoxious name. Periwinkle answered for himself: "I didn't like the
trapezes, nor the everlasting traveling. I wanted to be in a home like
mother told us about and go to school. And besides that, I didn't want
Pearl to be like the spangled circus ladies, even if some of them were
lovely and the Fat Woman perfectly grand; so was one of the clowns. You
can't imagine, Aunt Hetty, what a noble, charitable fellow Jerry was. I
disliked to leave them. But how I hated the snake-charmer; you can't
imagine, Auntie."
Aunt Hetty shivered at the mere mention of a snake-charmer. She could
easily sympathize with Periwinkle in his aversion for her.
"You use pretty big words for a boy, Periwinkle," was, however, all that
she said.
"Yes, the Fat Woman said she couldn't account for them, but she taught
us, and she is a very brilliant woman. Little Pearl can read splendid.
You can't imagine, Aunt Hetty."
"You said that the Fat Woman told you about me," hinted Miss Hetty,
forgetting that she didn't wish to know anything about these worldly
people.
"O yes," replied Pearl, also desirous of furnishing her aunt with some
more information concerning her friend, the Fat Woman. "She said as you
would be different from the ladies we were used to, but you'd be our
relation and mean all for our good, and we was to put up with you as
you'd put up with us, and to respect you and love you like we did her.
But you won't mind just at first, will you, if we can't love you quite
so much as her, 'cause the Fat Woman was very dear to me and
Periwinkle."
A sudden something gushed up in the heart of Miss Maise, the something
that makes the Fat Woman and the clown and all of us kin, but it died
down as quickly, and she only said:
"I shall expect you to be good children and obey me, that is all."
"Not love you?" asked her young nephew in surprise.
The hard look faded again from Aunt Hetty's face as she yielding to such
an irresistible entreaty, hesitatingly replied:
"Yes--yes, a little if you can."