r request, they found Mrs. Collins rummaging a bureau drawer. Thence
she produced two generous pieces of pretty dimity,--Honey-Sweet's was
buff with little rose sprigs and Nancy Jane's had daisies on a pale-blue
ground.

While Lizzie was busy making doll dresses, Anne got a book with pictures
in it and gave forth a story with a readiness that amazed Mrs. Collins.

"Ain't you a good reader!" she exclaimed. "You read so fast I can't
understand half you say."

"I'm not reading all that," honesty compelled Anne to confess, as she
beamed with pleasure at Mrs. Collins's praise. "I read when the words
are short, and when they're long and the print's solid, I make it up out
of my head to fit the pictures."

"Ah! you come of high-learnt folks," said Mrs. Collins, admiringly.
"Now, my Jake and Peter, they can't read nothing but what's in the book
and that a heap of trouble to 'em. And Lizzie here, she's wore out two
first readers and don't hardly know her letters yet."

Lizzie soon tired of sewing and she and Anne pattered off through the
halls to the bareness and strangeness of which Anne could not get used.
Where, she wondered, were the people in tarnished gilt frames--slim
smiling ladies and stately gentlemen with stocks and wigs--that used to
be there? The two girls played lady and come-to-see in the bare
up-stairs rooms awhile. Then Anne said, "Lizzie, I'm going up the little
ladder into the attic and walk around the chimneys."

"Don't! It's dark up there," shuddered Lizzie.

"Dark as midnight," agreed Anne; "heavy dark. You can feel it. It's the
only place I used to be afraid of. I have to make myself go there."

"Why?" asked Lizzie.

"I--don't just know--but I do. You wait here." She came back a little
later, dusty, cobwebby, flushed. "I knew there wasn't anything there--in
the dark more'n the light," she said. "I know it, and still I just have
to make myself not be scared. Whew! It's hot up there. Lizzie, let's go
in the parlor. I've not been in there yet."

"No," objected Lizzie. "The little old lady's in there--or in the room
back of it. Them's her rooms."

"The little old lady? who is she?" inquired Anne.

"She's the one I take breakfast and dinner and supper to. She comes here
in the summer and she sits in there and rocks and reads."

"Doesn't she ever go out?" Anne wanted to know.

"Oh, yes! she walks in the yard or garden every day. You just ain't
happened to see her. We've played away from the house