chamber, I mine (which was employed as the guest-chamber upon
occasion), and our parents the other. What more could be asked? for
when Rose was born, her crib stood beside her mother's bedstead.

When we were not asleep--that is, during twelve hours out of the
twenty-four--Una's existence and mine were passed mainly in the outer
sitting-room and in the dining-room. There was plenty to entertain us.
I had my rocking-horse, which I bestrode with perfect fearlessness; my
porcelain lion, which still survives unscathed after the cataclysms of
half a century; my toy sloop, made for me by Uncle Nat; and a
jack-knife, all but the edge and point, which had been removed out of
deference to my youth. Una had a doll, a miniature mahogany
centre-table and bureau, and other things in which I felt no interest.
In common, we possessed the box of wooden bricks, and the big
portfolio containing tracings by my mother, exquisitely done, of
Flaxman's "Outlines of the Iliad and Odyssey" and other classic
subjects. We knew by heart the story of all these mythological
personages, and they formed a large part of our life. They also served
the important use of suggesting to my father his Wonder-Book and
Tanglewood Tales stories, and, together with the figures of Gothic
fairy-lore, they were the only playmates, with the exception of our
father and mother, that we had or desired.

But our father and mother were, of course, the main thing, after all.
She was with us all day long; he, from the time he stopped writing,
early in the afternoon, till our bed-time. They answered all our
questions about things animate and inanimate, physical and
metaphysical; and that must have taken time, for our curiosity was
magnificent; and "The Old Boy," my father records, "asked me today
what were sensible questions--I suppose with a view to asking me