chines!" returned the old lady, indignantly, "we had our
fingers and pins and needles. But sometimes we couldn't have pins
and had to pin things together with thorns. How would you like that?"

"I'd rather be born now," said Marjorie. "I wouldn't want to have so many
step-mothers as you had, and I'd rather be named Marjorie than
_Experience_."

"Experience is a good name, and I'd have earned it by this time if my
mother hadn't given it to me," and the sunken lips puckered themselves
into a smile. "I could tell you some _dreadful_ things, too, but Hepsie
won't like it if I do. I'll tell you one, though. I don't like to think
about the dreadful things myself. I used to tell them to my boys and
they'd coax me to tell them again, about being murdered and such things.
A girl I knew found out after she was married that her husband had killed
a peddler, to steal his money to marry her with, and people found it out
and he was hanged and she was left a widow!"

"Oh, dear, _dear_," exclaimed Marjorie, "have dreadful things been always
happening? Did she die with a broken heart?"

"No, indeed, she was married afterward and had a good husband. She got
through, as people do usually, and then something good happened."

"I'll remember that," said Marjorie, her hazel eyes full of light; "but
it was dreadful."

"And there were robbers in those days."

"Were there giants, too?"

"I never saw a giant, but I saw robbers once. The women folks were alone,
not even a boy with us, and six robbers came for something to eat and
they ransacked the house from garret to cellar; they didn't hurt us at
all, but we _were_ scared, no mistake. And after they were gone we found
out that the baby was gone, Susannah's little black baby, it had died the
day before and mother laid it on a table in the parlor and covered it
with a sheet and they had caught it up and ran away with it."

"Oh, _dear_," ejaculated Marjorie.

"Father got men out and they hunted, but they never found the robbers or
the baby. If Susannah didn't cry nobody ever did! She had six other
children but this baby was so cunning! We used to feed it and play with
it and had cried our eyes sore the day it died. But we never found it."

"It wasn't so bad as if it had been alive," comforted Marjorie, "they
couldn't hurt it. And it was in Heaven before they ran away with the
body. But I don't wonder the poor mother was half frantic."

"Poor Susannah, she used to talk about it as long