with
all her heart and soul she had a sister or a brother to tend and
kiss and pet, it never once occurred to her that any of those tender
familiarities could be expended on her father: she would as soon have
thought of caressing any of the goodly angels whose stout legs, flowing
curls, and impossible draperies sprawled among the pictures in the big
Bible, and who excited her wonder as much by their garments as their
turkey-wings and brandishing arms. So she betook herself to pets, and
growing up to the old-maidenhood of thirty-five before her father fell
asleep, was by that time the centre of a little world of her own,--hens,
chickens, squirrels, cats, dogs, lambs, and sundry transient guests of
stranger kind; so that, when she left her old home, and removed to the
little house in Dalton that had been left her by her mother's aunt, and
had found her small property safely invested by means of an old friend
of her father's, Miss Manners made one more journey to Vermont to bring
in safety to their future dwelling a cat and three kittens, an old blind
crow, a yellow dog of the true cur breed, and a rooster with three hens,
"real creepers," as she often said, "none of your long-legged, screaming
creatures."

Lucinda missed her father, and mourned him as constantly and faithfully
as ever a daughter could; but her temperament was more cheerful and
buoyant than his, and when once she was quietly settled in her little
house, her garden and her pets gave her such full occupation that she
sometimes blamed herself for not feeling more lonely and unhappy. A
little longer life or a little more experience would have taught her
better: power to be happy is the last thing to regret. Besides, it would
have been hard to be cheerless in that sunny little house, with its
queer old furniture of three-legged tables, high-backed chairs, and
chintz curtains where red mandarins winked at blue pagodas on a
deep-yellow ground, and birds of insane ornithology pecked at insects
that never could have been hatched, or perched themselves on blossoms
totally unknown to any mortal flora. Old engravings of Bartolozzi, from
the stiff elegances of Angelica Kaufman and the mythologies of Reynolds,
adorned the shelf; and the carpet in the parlor was of veritable English
make, older than Lucinda herself, but as bright in its fading and as
firm in its usefulness as she. Up-stairs the tiny chambers were decked
with spotless white dimity, and rush-bottomed chai