back
parlor, the sideboard brought in and put in the place of a sofa,
which was wheeled to an obtuse angle with the fire-place,--nine
square yards of gray drugget, with a black Etruscan border, sent up
by Mr. Scherman from Lovejoy's, and tacked carefully down by seam
and stripe, under Asenath's personal direction; cradle,
rocking-horse, baby-house, tin carts and picture-books removed from
the nursery and arranged in the new quarters,--the children
themselves following back and forth untiringly with their
one-foot-foremost hop over the stairs, and their hands clasping the
rods of the balusters,--some little shabby treasure always hugged
in the spare arm, chairs and crickets, and the low table suited to
their baby-chairs, at which they played and ate, transferred also;
until Asenath stood with a sudden sadness in the deserted chamber,
reduced to the regular bedroom furnishings, and looking dead and
bleak with the little life gone out of it.

But the warm south sun was beaming full into the pretty room below,
where the small possessors of a whole new, beautiful world were
chattering and dancing with delight; and up here, by and by, the
western shine would come to meet them at their bedtime, and the new
moon and the star-twinkle would peep in upon their sleep.

With her own hands, Asenath made the room as fresh and nice as could
be; put little frilled covers over the pillows of the low bed, and
on the half-high bureau top; brought in and set upon the middle of
this last a slender vase from her own table, with a tea-rose in it,
and said to herself when all was done,--

"How sweet and still it will be for them to come up to, after all!
It _isn't_ nice for children to be put to sleep in the midst of the
whole day's muss!"

The final thing was done the next morning. The carpenter came and
put a little gate across the head of the short stairway which would
now only be used as required between play-room and kitchen; the back
stairway of the main house giving equal access on the other side to
the parlor dining-room. China closet and dumb waiter were luckily in
that angle, also.

A second little railed gate barred baby trespass into the halls. The
sparrows were caged again.

"What would you have done if they hadn't been?" asked Hazel
Ripwinkley, speaking of the china closet and dumb waiter happening
to be just as they were. She had come over one morning with Miss
Craydocke, for a nursery visit and to see the new arrangemen