l of confusion, for some one or two hours.
Instead of making the bed, she would amuse herself with pulling off the
pillowcases, butting her woolly head among the pillows, till it would
sometimes be grotesquely ornamented with feathers sticking out in
various directions; she would climb the posts, and hang head downward
from the tops; flourish the sheets and spreads all over the apartment;
dress the bolster up in Miss Ophelia's night-clothes, and enact various
performances with that,--singing and whistling, and making grimaces
at herself in the looking-glass; in short, as Miss Ophelia phrased it,
"raising Cain" generally.

On one occasion, Miss Ophelia found Topsy with her very best scarlet
India Canton crape shawl wound round her head for a turban, going on
with her rehearsals before the glass in great style,--Miss Ophelia
having, with carelessness most unheard-of in her, left the key for once
in her drawer.

"Topsy!" she would say, when at the end of all patience, "what does make
you act so?"

"Dunno, Missis,--I spects cause I 's so wicked!"

"I don't know anything what I shall do with you, Topsy."

"Law, Missis, you must whip me; my old Missis allers whipped me. I an't
used to workin' unless I gets whipped."

"Why, Topsy, I don't want to whip you. You can do well, if you've a mind
to; what is the reason you won't?"

"Laws, Missis, I 's used to whippin'; I spects it's good for me."

Miss Ophelia tried the recipe, and Topsy invariably made a terrible
commotion, screaming, groaning and imploring, though half an hour
afterwards, when roosted on some projection of the balcony, and
surrounded by a flock of admiring "young uns," she would express the
utmost contempt of the whole affair.

"Law, Miss Feely whip!--wouldn't kill a skeeter, her whippins. Oughter
see how old Mas'r made the flesh fly; old Mas'r know'd how!"

Topsy always made great capital of her own sins and enormities,
evidently considering them as something peculiarly distinguishing.

"Law, you niggers," she would say to some of her auditors, "does you
know you 's all sinners? Well, you is--everybody is. White folks is
sinners too,--Miss Feely says so; but I spects niggers is the biggest
ones; but lor! ye an't any on ye up to me. I 's so awful wicked there
can't nobody do nothin' with me. I used to keep old Missis a swarin' at
me half de time. I spects I 's the wickedest critter in the world;"
and Topsy would cut a summerset, and come up brisk and s