The work was done, and Marcia arrayed in one of the simplest of Kate's afternoon frocks, when the brass knocker sounded through the house, startling her with its unfamiliar sound.
Breathlessly she hurried downstairs. The crucial moment had come when she must stand to meet her new relatives alone. With her hand trembling she opened the door, but there was only one person standing on the stoop, a girl of about her own age, perhaps a few months younger. Her hair was red, her face was freckled, and her blue eyes under the red lashes danced with repressed mischief. Her dress was plain and she wore a calico sunbonnet of chocolate color.
"Let me in quick before Grandma sees me," she demanded unceremoniously, entering at once before there was opportunity for invitation. "Grandma thinks I've gone to the store, so she won't expect me for a little while. I was jest crazy to see how you looked. I've ben watchin' out o' the window all the morning, but I couldn't ketch a glimpse of you. When David came out this morning I thought you'd sure be at the kitchen door to kiss him good-bye, but you wasn't, and I watched every chance I could get, but I couldn't see you till you run out in the garden fer corn. Then I saw you good, fer I was out hangin' up dish towels. You didn't have a sunbonnet on, so I could see real well. And when I saw how young you was I made up my mind I'd get acquainted in spite of Grandma. You don't mind my comin' over this way without bein' dressed up, do you? There wouldn't be any way to get here without Grandma seeing me, you know, if I put on my Sunday clo'es."
"I'm glad you came!" said Marcia impulsively, feeling a rush of something like tears in her throat at the relief of delay from the aunts. "Come in and sit down. Who are you, and why wouldn't your Grandmother like you to come?"
The strange girl laughed a mirthless laugh.
"Me? Oh, I'm Mirandy. Nobody ever calls me anything but Mirandy. My pa left ma when I was a baby an' never come back, an' ma died, and I live with Grandma Heath. An' Grandma's mad 'cause David didn't marry Hannah Heath. She wanted him to an' she did everything she could to make him pay 'tention to Hannah, give her fine silk frocks, two of 'em, and a real pink parasol, but David he never seemed to know the parasol was pink at all, fer he'd never offer to hold it over Hannah even when Grandma made him walk with her home from church ahead of us. So when it come out that David was really going to marry, and wouldn't take Hannah, Grandma got as mad as could be and said we never any of us should step over his door sill. But I've stepped, I have, and Grandma can't help herself."