that; won't you, my angel? She will tear up the horrid notes--mammy
will show her how!"

All the time that Katy was washing her face and brushing the dust of the
railway from her dress, Rose sat by with the little Rose in her lap,
entertaining her thus. When she was ready, the droll little mamma tucked
her baby under her arm and led the way downstairs to a large square
parlor with a bay-window, through which the westering sun was shining.
It was a pretty room, and had a flavor about it "just like Rose," Katy
declared. No one else would have hung the pictures or looped back the
curtains in exactly that way, or have hit upon the happy device of
filling the grate with a great bunch of marigolds, pale brown, golden,
and orange, to simulate the fire, which would have been quite too warm
on so mild an evening. Morris papers and chintzes and "artistic" shades
of color were in their infancy at that date; but Rose's taste was in
advance of her time, and with a foreshadowing of the coming "reaction,"
she had chosen a "greenery, yallery" paper for her walls, against which
hung various articles which looked a great deal queerer then than they
would to-day. There was a mandolin, picked up at some Eastern sale, a
warming-pan in shining brass from her mother's attic, two old samplers
worked in faded silks, and a quantity of gayly tinted Japanese fans and
embroideries. She had also begged from an old aunt at Beverly Farms a
couple of droll little armchairs in white painted wood, with covers of
antique needle-work. One had "Chit" embroidered on the middle of its
cushion; the other, "Chat." These stood suggestively at the corners of
the hearth.

"Now, Katy," said Rose, seating herself in "Chit," "pull up 'Chat' and
let us begin."