stairs and play like I was climbin' up to the Good
World where my mother is--that's why!"

Then we hushed our laughter, and asked her
where her home was, and what it was like, and
why she didn't like her Uncle Tomps and Aunt
'Lizabeth, and if she wouldn't want to visit them
sometimes.

"Oh, yes," she artlessly answered in reply to the
concluding query; "I'll want to go back there lots
o' times; but not to see them! I'll--only--go--back
--there--to--see"--and here she was holding up
the little flared-out fingers of her left hand, and
with the index finger of the right touching their
pink tips in ordered notation with the accent of
every gleeful word--"I'll--only--go--back--there
--to--see--David--Mason--Jeffries--'cause--he's
--the--boy--fer--me!" And then she clapped her
hands again and laughed in that half-hysterical, half-
musical way of hers till we all joined in and made
the echoes of the old hall ring again. "And then,"
she went on, suddenly throwing out an imperative
gesture of silence--"and then, after I've been in this--
here house a long, long time, and you all gits so's
you like me awful--awful--awful well, then some
day you'll go in that room there--and that room
there--and in the kitchen--and out on the porch--
and down the cellar--and out in the smoke-house--
and the wood-house--and the loft--and all around