The Sisters

"Didn't I wear my blue dress, trimmed with white?" Nina asked
suddenly, her mind seeming to have followed Edith's, and grasped
the meaning of what she heard.

"I dare say you did," Edith answered; "at all events this little
girl was very beautiful as she waited in the twilight for the
travellers."

"Call the little girl Nina, please, I'll get at it better then,"
was the next interruption; and with a smile, Edith said, "Nina, then, waited till they came--her father, her new mother
Petrea, and--"

"Beautiful Petrea," Nina exclaimed, "la belle Petrea, black hair
like yours, Miggie, and voice like the soft notes of the piano.
She taught me a heap of tunes which I never have forgotten, but
tell me more of the black-eyed baby, Nina's precious sister. I did
hug and squeeze her so--'la jolie enfant,' Marie called her."

Nina seemed to have taken the story away from Edith, who, when she
ceased speaking, again went on: "Eloise Marguerite was the baby sister's name; Eloise, for a proud
aunt, who, after they came home, would not suffer them to call her
so, and she was known as Marguerite, which Nina shortened into
Miggie, Nina darling," and Edith spoke sadly now. "Was your father
always kind to Petrea?"

There was a look in Nina's face like a scared bird, and raising
her hands to her head, she said, "Go away, old buzzing. Let Nina think what it was they used to do-
-pa and grandma and aunt Eloise. I know now; grandma and auntie
were proud of the Bernard blood, they said, and they called Petrea
vulgar, and baby sister a brat; and pa--oh, Miggie, I reckon he
was naughty to the new mother. He had a buzz in his head most
every night, not like mine, but a buzz that he got at the dinner
and the side-board, where they kept the bottles, and he struck
her, I saw him, and Marie, she was here, too, she stepped between
them, and called him a drunken, deceitful beast, and a heap more
in French. Then one morning when he was gone to New Orleans, and
would come home pretty soon, mother and Marie and Miggie went a
visiting to Tallahassee, or somewhere, and they never came back
again, though pa went after them as soon as he got home. Why
didn't they, Miggie?"