om, in front of my mirror, I practised looking out through my
lashes. But it was a nuisance, for though they weren't short they
curled back so suddenly that it didn't look right; and my hair being
blond and flying into corkscrews, and my being so little, and
forgetting not to step on my flounces when I tried to "sweep,"
altogether made it rather a failure, in spite of the black lace shawl.

But though I thought about her I didn't say anything more to father or
Abby, because questions that hadn't bothered them when I was little
seemed to worry them now. Father was for ever talking of the things I
must not do. One was not to be about in our neighborhood alone. It
was changing. And above all never to go over to Dupont Street, for
that, he said was getting to be notorious, and he hated to have it so
near. It was only a block below us, but it seemed to me very quiet,
and though Mr. Rood's gambling-house was on the corner there was never
any noise there, only such fine young men, and some that I knew, all
the time going in and out of it.

But that pleased father least of anything, and he asked me how would I
like to move over to the North Beach district, where all my friends
were. Talking it over with Hallie and Estrella I liked the idea very
much. But when I came home again to the old house, with the long
windows, and the palm, and the long steps up to the conservatory, and
all the rooms I knew, the very idea that I could have thought for a
moment of going away from it gave me a lump in my throat.

So I had to tell father that I couldn't. He pinched my cheek, and
said: "Next year, then;" and so we stayed on. This was in February,
1865.

CHAPTER I

THE BASKET OF MUSHROOMS

The seventh of May was my father's birthday. I always planned some
little surprise for him beside his present, and this morning I had got
up very early, before any one else was stirring, to slip down to the
Washington Street market for some fine fresh mushrooms. He was
extravagantly fond of them, but we seldom had them because Abby was
getting too old to be up for early marketing, and father always said
that mushrooms should come in with the dew to be good.

I had bought a little straw basket, green and red, and lined it with
leaves; and now I put on my white flounced gown and my flat green hat,
so that when I should come in with my basket as they sat at breakfast
it would seem like a little fete. Then I went a-tiptoe down the sta