"Cassandra," said mother, presently, "come here."

I obeyed with reluctance, making a show of turning down a leaf.

"Child," she continued, and her eyes wandered over me dreamily, till
they dropped on my stockings; "why will you waste so much time on
unprofitable stories?"

"Mother, I hate good stories, all but the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain;
I like that, because it makes me hungry to read about the roasted
potatoes the shepherd had for breakfast and supper. Would it make me
thankful if you only gave me potatoes without salt?"

"Not unless your heart is right before God."

"'_The Lord my Shepherd is_,'" sang Aunt Merce.

I put my hands over my ears, and looked defiantly round the room.
Its walls are no longer standing, and the hands of its builders have
crumbled to dust. Some mental accident impressed this picture on the
purblind memory of childhood.

We were in mother's winter room. She was in a low, chintz-covered
chair; Aunt Merce sat by the window, in a straight-backed chair, that
rocked querulously, and likewise covered with chintz, of a red and
yellow pattern. Before the lower half of the windows were curtains of
red serge, which she rattled apart on their brass rods, whenever she
heard a footstep, or the creak of a wheel in the road below. The walls
were hung with white paper, through which ran thread-like stripes of
green. A square of green and chocolate-colored English carpet covered