Mrs. Duds Sister | Page 3

no
mistake. Who are you?"
Again she flushed, but more lightly.
"I am Miss Redding," she said with a gentle dignity, "Mrs. Wilton's
sister."
He stared at her vaguely.
"Mrs. Wilton--oh! you're her sister? I didn't know--" He stopped
abruptly. As his confusion grew, her own faded away.
"You didn't know she had one?" she asked, almost mischievously.
"I didn't know you were here," he recovered himself. "You've never
been with Mrs. Dud before, have you?"
"No, not here when there was company," she said.
He hardly noticed the words; his mind was groping among past
histories.
"Her sister--her sister," he muttered. "Why, then," with an illuminating
smile, "I used to go to school with you! I'm Tom Varian!"
She smiled and held out her hand.

"I'm very glad to see you," she said cordially. "Won't you--" She looked
about for a chair, but he dropped on the grass at her feet.
"You've changed since we met last," he remarked, biting into his cooky.
She looked at his bronzed face and thick silvered hair and nodded
thoughtfully.
"I was six years old then," she said; "and you were one of the 'big
boys'--you were fourteen."
"That's a long while," he suggested laughingly.
"It is thirty-six years," she replied simply.
He winced. His associates were not accustomed to be so scrupulously
accurate. It seemed indecently long ago. And yet there was a certain
charm, now one faced it, a quaint halo of interest.
"You used to hand me water in a tin dipper," he said.
She nodded. "Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good," she said
seriously. "I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of it.
You drank a great deal."
He chuckled. "I was born thirsty," he acknowledged. "By George, how
it comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red
thing--remember how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk,
and another under that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit
on, and we just whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And
carved--Lord! I don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told,
that was clear! I nearly cut my thumb off there, one day."
"One of the big girls fainted away," she added, "and they laid her on the
floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I
spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was
very timid."
He began on another cooky.

"Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?" he inquired, his
eyes fixed reminiscently on the hedge.
She nodded softly.
"And played some game with stones? I can't just remember--"
"It was houses," she reminded him. "We little girls used to make little
houses--just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if
you boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner on."
"Ah, yes!" It all came back to him. "And then you'd race off to get
flag-root or something, and--"
"And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same," she added.
"But what a mite you were, to be in school!" he said wonderingly.
"What under heaven did you study?"
"I don't remember at all," she confessed. "But I suppose I spelled. Do
you remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to
'leave off head'?"
He chuckled. "I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot
would 'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was
maddening!"
He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of
interrupting.
"In the winter, though--George! but it was cold! We used to positively
swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such snows now!
How did you get there?"
"I only went in the summer," she said; "and I used to come in all
stained with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful"--she grew
stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and
pigtails--"the way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the
way to school!"

She had got over her first shyness, and had gained time to realize her
big apron, which she hastily untied. He caught the motion and
protested.
"No, no! Keep it on! I haven't seen a woman--a lady--in an apron for
years! Please keep it on! And do go on with the--the mess in the dish!"
"The mess"--she bent her brows reprovingly--"it's mayonnaise sauce.
But I don't think--"
He jumped up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee
wrung an involuntary groan from him. He walked a little stiffly toward