the other three sides of the house were rustling boughs and cool
grass and flower-beds. It suited my humor to sit in the scanty strip of
shadow cast by the eaves, my feet upon the step that had soaked in the
noonday heat, and to be as wretched as a five-year-old could make
herself, with a sharp sense of injury boring like a bit of steel into
her small soul. The room behind me was my mother's--the "chamber" of the
Southern home. A big four-poster, hung with dimity curtains, stood in
the farther corner. The dimity valance, trimmed, like the curtains, with
ball fringe, hid the trundle-bed that was pulled out at night for Mary
'Liza and me to sleep in. At the foot of the bed was my baby brother's
cradle. As Mam' Chloe was walking with him in the garden, it should have
been empty. Whereas, Mary 'Liza was putting her doll-baby to sleep in
it. We said "doll-baby" in those days. There was Musidora, my rag-baby,
who was a beauty when she was new.

She was not old now, but Fate had been unkind to her. Twice I had left
her out-of-doors all night. The first time was when I laid her at the
foot of a particularly tall corn-stalk, telling her that I would return
presently, but could not find her at all when I went back. I was up and
out early next morning and "found her indeed, but it made my heart
bleed," for a field mouse--with six acres of roasting-ears to choose
from--had made his supper on the bran that served my poor Musidora for
brains, nibbling a hole in the exact region of the _medulla oblongata_.
My mother plugged the cranium with raw cotton and stitched up the wound,
and the dear patient was doing better than could be expected, when there
was a thunder-storm and Musidora was on a bench in the summer-house. The
rain lasted all night, and I could not go out again.

One immediate and obvious consequence of this adventure was that there
was nothing left of Musidora's features except her eyebrows, which were
laid on with indelible ink instead of water-colors. She hung, head
downward, in front of the kitchen fire for twelve hours before she was
thoroughly dry. My mother "indicated" eyes, nose, and mouth with
pen-and-ink, but the effect was flat and mournful.

While I sat in the door that evening, putting on Musidora's night-gown,
I overheard Mam' Chloe say to my mother:--

"I declar' to gracious, Miss Ma'y Anna, you ought to buy that chile a
sure-'nough doll-baby while you are in town. It f'yar breaks my heart to
see how much