life very pleasant, now that grief was softened down into tender
recollection. To be alone, and able to do things just when she wanted
to do them, and in her own way; to consider what she herself liked to
eat, and to wear, and to do; to feel that she could come and go, rise
up and lie down, at her own will,--was strange but pleasant to her.
How long the pleasure would have lasted is another question, for the
woman's nature was to love and to serve; but just now there was no
doubt that she was enjoying her freedom.

And now she had taken in this little stranger, just because she felt
like it; it was a new luxury, a new amusement, that was all. Such a
pretty little creature, so soft and young, and with that brightness in
her face! Sister Lizzie was light-complected, and this child didn't
favour her, not the least mite; yet it was some like the same feeling,
as if it were a kitten or a pretty bird to take care of, and feed and
pet. So thought Abby, as she tucked up Marie in Sister Lizzie's little
white bed, in the pink ribbon chamber, as she had named it in sport,
after she had let Lizzie furnish it to her taste, that last year before
she was married. The child looked about her as if it were a palace,
instead of a lean-to chamber with a sloping roof. She had never seen
anything like this in her life, since those days when she went to the
chateau. She touched the white walls softly, and passed her hand over
the pink mats on the bureau with wondering awe. And then she curled up
in the white bed when Abby bade her, as like a kitten as anything could
be. "Oh, you are good, good!" cried the child, whom the warmth and
comfort and kindness seemed to have lifted into another world from the
cold, sordid one in which she had lived so long. She caught the kind
hard knotted hand, and kissed it; but Abby snatched it away, and
blushed to her eyebrows, feeling that something improper had occurred.
"There! there!" she said, half confused, half reproving. "You don't