In the rest of the house, filled with dark, heavy, dimly shining furniture, reigned Mattice, another old negro woman, but, unlike the jolly, fat cook, yellow and shriveled and silent.  She it was who arrayed Camille and Cecile with such unerring taste, and her skilful old hands brushed and dressed their long black hair in artful twists and coils.

Here, against their own background, the two girls seemed more at their ease and showed more spontaneity than at school.  They were fond of “dressing up” and of organizing impromptu dramatizations of the stories of familiar books, and showed a native ability for acting which explained their success in recitations.  Once when the fun was very rollicking, Camilla brought out from a closet a banjo and, thrumming on its strings with skilful fingers, played a tingling accompaniment to one of her songs.  The other little girls were delighted and clamored for more, but she put it away quickly with almost a frown on her sweet face, and for once in her life did not yield to their demands.

“Well, I think more of her for that!” remarked Judith, when this incident was repeated to her by Sylvia, who cried out, “Why, Judy, how hateful you are about poor Camilla!”

Nothing was learned about the past history of the Fingals beyond the fact, dropped once by the cook, that they had lived in Louisiana before coming to La Chance, but there were rumors, based on nothing at all, and everywhere credited, that their mother had been a Spanish-American heiress, disinherited by her family for marrying a Protestant.  Such a romantic and picturesque element had never before entered the lives of the Washington Street school-children.  Once a bold and insensitive little girl, itching to know more of this story-book history, had broken the silence about Mrs. Fingal and had asked Camilla bluntly, “Say, who was your mother, anyway?” The question had been received by Camilla with whitening lips and a desperate silence—­ended by a sudden loud burst of sobs, which tore Sylvia’s heart.  “You mean, horrid thing!” she cried to the inquisitor.  “Her mother isn’t dead a year yet!  Camilla can’t bear to talk about her!”

Once in a great while Mr. Fingal was visible,—­a bald, middle-aged man with a white, sad face, and eyes that never smiled, although his lips often did when he saw the clusters of admiring children hanging about his daughters.

Judith held aloof from these gatherings at the Fingal house, her prejudice against the girls never weakening, although Cecile as well as Camilla had won over almost all the other girls of her grade.  Judith showed the self-contained indifference which it was her habit to feel about matters which did not deeply stir her, and made no further attempts to analyze or even to voice her animosity beyond saying once, when asked to go with them on a drive, that she didn’t like their “meechin’ ways,”—­a vigorous New England phrase which she had picked up from her mother.