't let on about all these here
scrapes they'll think more of you."

Sylvia's advice struck me as being very sensible, and I therefore
resolved to act upon it, and endeavor to make them consider me quite a
different character from the hoyden Amy. I kissed Cousin Statia, who
took up her sewing as calmly as though nothing of any importance was
about to occur; and having delighted Holly's eyes with a bright ribbon
in which all the colors of the rainbow seemed combined, I presented
Sylvia with a collar worked by myself, and passed out to the stage,
which was waiting for us. Our journey home was quite an uneventful one;
and the wind being more favorable, we were not so long on the passage.

My parents were watching for us with anxious solicitude; but when the
door opened in bounded a wild, blooming hoyden, in whose sparkling eyes
and glowing cheeks they could detect no trace of the delicate invalid.
Henry and Fred, with a troop of younger brothers, stood ready to devour
me with kisses; but Mammy, rushing impulsively forward, pushed them all
aside, and cried and laughed over me alternately, while she almost
crushed me with the violence of her affection. Before I was well seated,
Fred spied out the bag of hazel-nuts; and a vigorous sound of cracking
informed me that the work of devastation had already commenced.

How they all stared at my ear-rings! But mamma turned pale and burst
into tears; while I stood still, feeling very uncomfortable, and yet not
being exactly aware of the manner in which I had displeased her. Aunt
Henshaw, however, with a minute accuracy that struck me as being
painfully correct, related every circumstance connected with that
unfortunate business, from her finding me extended on the bed to the
time when the rings were placed in my ears.

"Oh Amy! how could you!" exclaimed my mother; "I have always despised
the barbarous practice of making holes in the flesh for the sake of
ornament," she continued, "but to have them pierced by an ignorant
colored woman! Come here, child, and let me look at your ears. They are
completely spoiled!" she exclaimed, "the holes are one-sided, and close
to the very bone! What is to be done?"

Aunt Henshaw suggested that it would be better to let those grow up, and
have others made in the right place; but I still retained a vivid
recollection of that scene of torture, and did not therefore feel
willing to have it repeated. But the ear-rings must come out--they were
no ornam