within--a will perhaps not quite so aggressive as it was
obstinate. But she meant only to praise me and please me;
and dearly I loved to stay with her in her cozy up-stairs room
across the lane, that the sun looked into nearly all day.

Another adopted aunt lived down-stairs in the same house. This
one was a sober woman; life meant business to her, and she taught
me to sew in earnest, with a knot in the end of my thread,
although it was only upon clothing for my ragchildren - absurd
creatures of my own invention, limbless and destitute of
features, except as now and then one of my older sisters would,
upon my earnest petition, outline a face for one of them, with
pen and ink. I loved them, nevertheless, far better than I did
the London doll that lay in waxen state in an upper drawer at
home,--the fine lady that did not wish to be played with, but
only to be looked at and admired.

This latter aunt I regarded as a woman of great possessions. She
owned the land beside us and opposite us. Her well was close to
our door, a well of the coldest and clearest water I ever drank,
and it abundantly supplied the whole neighborhood.

The hill behind her house was our general playground; and I
supposed she owned that, too, since through her dooryard, and
over her stone wall, was our permitted thoroughfare thither. I
imagined that those were her buttercups that we gathered when we
got over the wall, and held under each other's chin, to see, by
the reflection, who was fond of butter; and surely the yellow
toadflax (we called it "lady's slipper") that grew in the rock-
crevices was hers, for we found it nowhere else.