LARISSA MAY'S kitchen table was heaped with rose leaves. She was filling a large brown jar. with layers of rose leaves and salt. She sprinkled in various spices too, then sniffed at the mixture daintily.
“Needs a little more cinnamon,” she murmured,
“I wish you'd let the cinnamon alone,” said a quick, sweet voice—“the cinnamon, and the rose leaves, and the salt, and the whole of it. I'd like to fling it into the fire.”
“Don't talk so, Anne.”
Anne stood in the door, She had just come down from her chamber. She was all ready to go to the picnic. She wore a broad-brimmed white straw hat trimmed with fine pink flowers. Her ruffled, pink-flowered muslin gown fluttered crisply. She had pinned some pink rose-buds at her throat.
Anne and Clarissa were wonderfully alike, but the comparison would have been less derogatory for Clarissa had they been different. The resemblance brought the regret and humiliation of loss to her. Anne showed what Clarissa had been. She was the rose of this spring, her sister was one of last. If both of them had not been roses, the last year's flower would not have seemed so forlorn.
Clarissa's dull blond hair was brushed smoothly around her ears; Anne's was crinkled, and there were gold lights in it. Clarissa's skin was tintless and faintly lined; her sister's was warm and rosy and smooth, Clarissa's lips were thin; Anne's, full and red. One's figure showed angles; the other's, curves.
Clarissa, replying with her mild, deprecating voice, gazed admiringly at her sister. “You look real nice,” she added.
“Sometimes I don't care whether I look nice or not. You do make me so out of patience!”
“Why, Anne, how you talk!”
“I don't care—you do. The idea of your shutting yourself up here, packing a mess of rose leaves into a jar! There isn't any sense in it.”
“You know I'd rather stay at home.”
“I don't care if you had. It's real nice for me going alone!”
“Ellen Pierson's going, isn't she?”
“I don't care if she is. Sometimes anybody 'd like their own sister.”
“I feel as if I was so much older.”
“Older! You're not any older than dozens of girls that go all the time. You're not any older than Addie Leach or Abby Dutton; and I guess they'd be mad enough if anybody was to tell them they were too old to go.”
“There's a lock of hair loose. Come round here and let me fix it.”
“I don't care if it is,” said Anne. But she stepped over to her sister, nevertheless, and Clarissa tucked up the golden lock carefully.
P'rhaps I'll go next time,” said she, appeasingly. “All is, I don't feel much like it, you know. People don't, I suppose, as they grow older.”
“If they get up a party to go on West Mountain next week, will you go?”
“I'll see about it.”
“I'll crimp your hair, and we'll fix over your blue dress.”
“You'll be late, if you don't run along.”
“Do I look all right?”
Yes. 1 guess your hair'll stay up now.”
After Anne had danced out with a crisp swish of muslin skirts, Clarissa went on with her work. She gathered up the soft rose leaves with her little thin veiny hands, and laid them in the jar with the greatest care.
She was soon interrupted again, however. “Oh, here you are!” said another voice. There was a contemptuous inflection in it. A tall, pale woman stood in the door. She held out a package of letters and a little white box stiffly in one hand.
“Oh, is it you, Aunt Joanna?”
“Yes, it's me. Why ain't you gone to the picnic?”
“I didn't feel like it.”
“Didn't feel like it! I s'pose you felt more like putterin' over rose leaves. Clarissa May, I b'lieve you're jest about a fool.”
“I don't know what you mean.” Clarissa glanced at the letters, and her hands trembled.
“Yes, you do know what I mean. I came in the front way, an' went upstairs. I wanted a piece of brown cambric to line my sleeves, an' I thought I'd see if you hadn't got any. An' I found these things in your bottom bureau drawer, tucked away in the corner out of sight. I'd like to know why you've kept these old letters of Gilman Lane's so dreadful choice for all this time. They were wrote much as ten year ago, some of 'em.”
“Aunt Joanna, give me those letters, please.”
Clarissa trembled so she could scarcely speak. She felt as if all the light in the world was shining on her heart and showing it forth pitilessly, dispelling all its innocent shadows, which had seemed like guilty ones to her.
“I never see such a mess of nonsense in my life: all 'darling' an' 'dear.' It's enough to make anybody sick.”
“Aunt Joanna, you haven't read them?”