Twink's House

My best friend Twink lived in the Darget house on Grand Street, the one built by Henry Darget, the Frenchman. He'd come down in the world by the time we knew him and us kids used to dare each other a dime to go peer in the window of his house down by the creek. Oh, I can see him now, running out of his house roaring at us...

But it was a fine house, three stories tall and stained glass mullions in the front. Ours was a plain Jane beside it and sometimes Helen and I would lie in the dark pretending that our Great Aunt Bessie was super rich and would pass on and leave us money. It was Helen's idea more than mine. She had rather a taste for the finer things of life and so it's funny, isn't it, that I was the one who ended up living in the Darget house? Because that's this house, you know, the one I inherited from Jack. And Helen, bless her, never in anything nicer than that cottage she bought down in Texas. Of course she was right proud of it, as she should be.

These questions you ask me, they do take me back. I loved Twink as much as I loved Helen, you know, and many times I wished she were my sister and Helen lived down the street. Of course it would have been different between us if we were sisters, I suppose. Once she married she had less time for me, and then with the kids even less time and that was about the time that Helen and Mother and Father were killed and I finally had money to put myself through nursing school. But back in grade school we were jacks and balls, peas in a pod, bell and a whistle.

You know how it is between girls. Now Helen never had anything like that, since you ask. She was always more of a solitary one. One of the ways we differed.

Hope your studies are going well or hardly going,

Love and kisses,

Aunt Jessie

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