bak. If they gits ter Heaven, they don' wan'er, and if they gits ter de
udder place they can't. The devil won' never let 'em git away frum him,
kase he's wuk so hard ter git 'em."

The part of the house of most interest to Roberta was the parlor, where
were stored the heir-looms of the family, a spinet with all the ivory worn
off the keys, two pier-glasses with brass claws for feet, and a clock so
tall and big she actually hid in it once when she was playing "hide and go
seek" with some little visitors, who said they had seen a clock "larger."

Roberta was a very amiable child, but old Squire said she "wuz techus
erbout sum things." And the old clock must have been one of the things.

The chairs were brought from Virginia on the backs of mules, and the
covers on them embroidered by the little girl's grandmother. The same busy
hands that superintended the manufacture of those piles of linen sheets
stored away in the presses above stairs, and the counterpanes woven with
the American eagle in the center, bunches of hollyhocks and sweet pea in
the corners, and trumpet vines running along the edges.

The paper on the walls of the parlor was a curiosity. It was imported from
England many, many years before Roberta's mother was born, because her
grandfather saw a room somewhere, I think in Baltimore, that had similar
paper, and he took such a fancy to it he ordered some from the same place.
The paper was wrought in great panels, with life-size figures of orientals
in the center. They were terrible looking men, the children thought. They
had swarthy skins and beards down to their waists, and fierce eyes that
flashed out beneath their turbans with a fe-fo-fi-fum look.

Those fierce eyes were the cause of no little alarm, I can assure you,