longest and deepest of the tide-water coves that cut through
Riverton had but four rooms in all,--the kitchen tacked to the back
porch, after the fashion of South Carolina kitchens, the shed room
in which Peter slept, the dining-room which was the general
living-room as well, and his mother's room, which opened directly
off the dining-room, and in which his mother sat all day and
sometimes almost all night at her sewing-machine. When Peter tired
of lying on his tummy on the dining-room floor, trying to draw
things on a bit of slate or paper, he liked to turn his head and
watch the cloth moving swiftly under the jigging needle, and the
wheel turning so fast that it made an indistinct blur, and sang with
a droning hum. He could see, too, a corner of his mother's bed with
the patchwork quilt on it. The colors of the quilt were pleasantly
subdued in their old age, and the calico star set in a square
pleased Peter immensely. He thought it a most beautiful quilt. There
was visible almost all of the bureau, an old-fashioned walnut
affair with a small, dim, wavy glass, and drawers which you pulled
out by sticking your fingers under the bunches of flowers that
served as knobs. The fireplaces in both rooms were in a shocking
state of disrepair, but one didn't mind that, as in winter a fire
burned in them, and in summer they were boarded up with fireboards
covered with cut-out pictures pasted on a background of black
calico. Those gay cut-out pictures were a source of never-ending
delight to Peter, who was intimately acquainted with every flower,
bird, cat, puppy, and child of them. One little girl with a pink
parasol and a purple dress, holding a posy in a lace-paper frill, he
would have dearly loved to play with.

Over the mantelpiece in his mother's room hung his father's picture,
in a large gilt frame with an inside border of bright red plush. His