oles me, to be sure, by saying that there
will be life enough here again when the child has grown large; but, dear
me, by that time I shall have long been lying in the garden yonder! Oh,
I wish I might live to hear merry voices ringing again through the house
at Buetze, and see the rooms down-stairs occupied; but I do not believe
it possible. Well, I must not allow myself to be overpowered by the
loneliness and tediousness about me; I sit at my desk and will try to
narrate the late events here, in regular order. So much has happened
here; the stories rush to my mind all confused, but I should like to
recall the past in proper order.

"If I only knew how to begin! I have already cut three goose-quills to
pieces! I look out of the window, the trees are clad in the first green,
the sky is blue, only a dark line of cloud rising over the barn yonder.
It is warm and sultry, as before an approaching thunder-storm, and now
another spring day rises before my eyes, and now I know.

"It was a ninth of May, just as damp and sultry as to-day. Anna Maria
came in to me. My room was up-stairs here then, on the same story, the
same big flowered furniture stood here, and I was the same infirm,
limping old creature, only fresher and brighter; I laughed more than any
one in the house in those days. I can see Anna Maria before me so
distinctly, as she stood there by the spinet in her every-day gray
dress, with a black taffeta apron over it, and the bunch of keys at her
belt.

"'Aunt Rosamond, will you look at the room which I have been getting
ready for the child?' she asked, and I rose, and limped along beside her
down the hall as far as the large, dark room. I never could bear the
room, and to-day, as I entered it, it oppressed me like a nightmare. To
be sure, dazzling white pillows stood up beneath the green curtains of
the canopy, and a spray of elder on the toilet-table sent its fragrance
through the room; but neither this nor the sultry air which came in at
the window could improve the damp, cold atmosphere, or convey any degree
of comfort to the room.

"'You ought to have had it warmed, Anna Maria,' said I, with a little
shiver, 'and had that unpleasant picture taken away.' And I pointed to
the half-length portrait of a young woman looking boldly and saucily
forth into the world, with a pair of sparkling black eyes, who was
called in the family the 'Mischief-maker.' According to an old,
half-forgotten story, she had come by her n