us children could not fail to make a permanent impression.

I think that must have been also the last special attention I
received from him, for a little sister appeared soon after, whose
coming was announced to me with the accompaniment of certain
mysterious hints about my nose being out of joint. I examined
that feature carefully in the looking glass, but could not
discover anything usual about it. It was quite beyond me to
imagine that our innocent little baby could have anything to do
with the possible disfigurement of my face, but she did absorb
the fondness of the whole family, myself included, and she became
my father's playmate and darling, the very apple of his eye. I
used sometimes to wish I were a baby too, so that he would notice
me, but gradually I accepted the situation.

Aunt Hannah used her kitchen or her sitting room for a
schoolroom, as best suited her convenience. We were delighted
observers of her culinary operations and other employments. If a
baby's head nodded, a little bed was made for it on a soft
"comforter" in the corner, where it had its nap out undisturbed.
But this did not often happen; there were so many interesting
things going on that we seldom became sleepy.

Aunt Hannah was very kind and motherly, but she kept us in fear
of her ferule, which indicated to us a possibility of smarting
palms. This ferule was shaped much like the stick with which she
stirred her hasty pudding for dinner,--I thought it was the same,
--and I found myself caught in a whirlwind of family laughter by
reporting at home that "Aunt Hannah punished the scholars with
the pudding-stick."