ssing green leaves on them with hot flatirons. But it did not
succeed. You cannot imitate accidents; they just happen once; the next
one is something different. So all the girls envied me my cloak. It
lasted me ten years, for I was not much taller at twenty than at ten."

My mother was silent again and I exclaimed "is that all, mother? Tell
some more, do."

"Stories, my son, must have an end or you would not like them--but there
would never be another. I have heard of a book that had a thousand, but
it took a thousand evenings to tell them. So one an evening ought to be
enough, and it is your bedtime."

Here my youngest sister, Harriet, who was fifteen years old, said,
"Mother, why don't you tell him the other part of the cloak story?"

"Yes, tell it," I entreated.

My mother appeared to be wholly absorbed in her stocking; she had
dropped a stitch and was working her needles painfully, trying to
recover it. A half sad smile, half pleased expression came into her face
and a faint blush upon her brown cheek.

"Well, I suppose the journey I took in the red cloak with the tansy
figures is what your sister wants me to tell you about. My mother, your
grandmother, was a widow. I never saw my own father, for I was born
while he was away fighting in the battles of the Revolution and he never
returned; he was killed at Yorktown. When I was about ten years old my
mother had an offer of marriage from a farmer in Medway who had lost his
wife; his children had grown up, married and settled excepting one son
twenty years old. It was a matter of convenience on both sides; my
mother needed a home and he needed a housekeeper. The marriage took
place in her own house. But she did not go immediately to her new home;
she had a little property to dispose of and other small affairs to
arrange. When she had sold everything but her old white mare she set out
for Medway upon the mare's back, taking me with her on a pillion behind.
It was a day in Spring, and although not cold, I wore my cloak as the
easiest way of carrying it. No doubt it was a queer spectacle we made;
yet, not as queer then as it would seem now--the old white mare ambling
along, head down, and feet hardly clearing the ground under the heavy
load, for your grandmother was a large, stout woman and we had a number
of bags and bundles fastened onto the saddle, and I almost hidden among
them, was quite covered by my cloak so that I might have been mistaken
for another parcel h