Pearl and Periwinkle | Page 2

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