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.
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