usy
hands that superintended the manufacture of those piles of linen sheets
stored away in the presses above stairs, and the counterpanes woven with
the American eagle in the center, bunches of hollyhocks and sweet pea in
the corners, and trumpet vines running along the edges.

The paper on the walls of the parlor was a curiosity. It was imported from
England many, many years before Roberta's mother was born, because her
grandfather saw a room somewhere, I think in Baltimore, that had similar
paper, and he took such a fancy to it he ordered some from the same place.
The paper was wrought in great panels, with life-size figures of orientals
in the center. They were terrible looking men, the children thought. They
had swarthy skins and beards down to their waists, and fierce eyes that
flashed out beneath their turbans with a fe-fo-fi-fum look.

Those fierce eyes were the cause of no little alarm, I can assure you,
when darkness swooped down upon Roberta and Polly and Dilsy, playing
Lady-come-to-see in the old parlor in childlike unconsciousness of the
passage of time. Polly, the imp, would always insist upon singing "Lady
Jane Grey," as they tiptoed backward out of the room. They did not dare to
look away, for fear those terrible men would fly at them when they were
not looking and throttle them with their long, bony fingers, so they
joined hands and sung as they tiptoed backward:

Lady Jane Grey, she went to church for to pray;
She went to the stile and there rested awhile;
She went to the door and there rested a little more;
She went up the aisle and there rested awhile;
She looked up; she looked down;
She saw a corpse lie on the ground;
She said to the sexton, must I look so
When I die? Boo, boo!

Now when they came to the last part it was always Polly who stretched open
her eyes till they looked like an owl's great round eyes, and jumped at
Roberta and Dilsy and hollered "Boo, boo!" Although they knew it was
coming they were awfully scared, and would break loose and run, screaming
like mad things, into the sitting-room, really believing the orientals
were after them. They had made believe it so many times, and Polly had
said so many times, "I'll cross my heart, Lil Missus, 'twuz dem drefful
men dat sed 'boo-oo'; I seed thar lips muven; you don' ketch me in thar no
mo'," they had come to really believe it. They had heard the story of the
children who played wolf, and