A LITTLE OF EVERYTHING.


Just as I began to be a wee little bit tired of housework, and to feel
that I would like nothing so much as a day with my birds, my fancy-work,
and a charming story-book, what should happen but that grandmamma's
headache and Aunt Hetty's "misery in her bones" should both come at
once.

Tap, tap, tap on the floor above my head in the early dawn came
grandmamma's ebony stick.

Veva Fay and Marjorie Downing were both spending the night with me. Veva
had slept on the wide, old-fashioned lounge in the corner, and Marjorie
in the broad couch with me, and we had all talked till it was very late,
as girls always do when they sleep in one room, unless, of course, they
are sisters, or at school, and used to it.

I had a beautiful room. It ran half across the front of the house, and
had four great windows, a big fire-place, filled in summer with branches
of cedar, or bunches of ferns, growing in a low box, and filling the
great space with cool green shade, and in winter the delight of the
girls, because of the famous hickory fires which blazed there, always
ready to light at a touch.

In one corner stood my mahogany desk, above it a lovely picture of the
Madonna and Child. Easy-chairs were standing around, and there were
hassocks and ottomans in corners and beside the windows. My favorite
engraving--a picture representing two children straying near a
precipice, fearing no danger, and just ready to fall, when behind them,