"Well, I don't remember all of it," admitted Ermengarde.

"Well," said Sara, with courage and determination, "I'll tell it to you
over again."

And she plunged once more into the gory records of the French
Revolution, and told such stories of it, and made such vivid pictures of
its horrors, that Miss St. John was afraid to go to bed afterward, and
hid her head under the blankets when she did go, and shivered until she
fell asleep. But afterward she preserved lively recollections of the
character of Robespierre, and did not even forget Marie Antoinette and
the Princess de Lamballe.

"You know they put her head on a pike and danced around it," Sara had
said; "and she had beautiful blonde hair; and when I think of her, I
never see her head on her body, but always on a pike, with those furious
people dancing and howling."

Yes, it was true; to this imaginative child everything was a story; and
the more books she read, the more imaginative she became. One of her
chief entertainments was to sit in her garret, or walk about it, and
"suppose" things. On a cold night, when she had not had enough to eat,
she would draw the red footstool up before the empty grate, and say in
the most intense voice:

"Suppose there was a grate, wide steel grate here, and a great glowing
fire--a glowing fire--with beds of red-hot coal and lots of little
dancing, flickering flames. Suppose there was a soft, deep rug, and this
was a comfortable chair, all cushions and crimson velvet; and suppose I
had a crimson velvet frock on, and a deep lace collar, like a child in