ndering. Everything seemed very odd at Aunt Hannah's;
but somehow its strangeness made it rather interesting, it was such a
contrast to home. There she had always played in well-furnished rooms
with plenty of toys, and good fires in winter. The attic had no carpet
and no fire, and the only things in it were one broken old chair, a
poker, some rolls of dusty wall-paper, and some large black boxes. Its
single attraction was its lone-ness; there was no one here who could say
"don't," and no need for lowered voices and quietness. This Susan soon
found to be a very delightful thing, for her life at home had been
carried on as it were on tip-toe, for fear of disturbing Freddie, and
she had always been taught that little girls should be never heard, and
very seldom seen.

"If you like dolls," continued Sophia Jane in an off-hand manner,
"perhaps Nanna would lend you Black Dinah. She's more good-natured than
Margaretta."

"I don't want to ask her, thank you," said Susan. "Why does she have a
doll? she's too old to play with it, isn't she?"

"Oh, gracious me, yes, of course," said Sophia Jane with a shrug.
"They're both quite grown-up. Nanna's seventeen, and Margaretta's
eighteen. They only keep it as a cur'osity; all made of rags and
covered with black silk, and dressed like a native. The nuns made it in
the convent at Bahia."

"What is Bahia?" asked Susan.

"It's a place in America where they come from. They came over in a
ship."

"What for?"

"Why, to learn English, of course, you silly thing!--and French too--and
all sorts of things. There's a French master comes once a week to teach
them. And they learn lessons with Aunt too. They're doing them now."

So this was the meaning of Bahia girls! Susan thought it over a little
and then asked:

"Did you come over in the ship too?"

Sophia Jane paused in the midst of a fantastic dance she was performing,
with the poker brandished in one hand.

"Of course not," she said scornfully. "I'm English."

"Who are you, then?" asked Susan. She felt that the question sounded
rude, but it was a thing that she must know.

"I'm an orphan," said Sophia Jane cheerfully, and she took an agile leap
on to one of the old bores.

Susan gazed at her. She was not at all her idea of an orphan. In
pictures they always wore black and looked sad, and at home there was a
crossing-sweeper who said he was an orphan, and seemed to think it a
hard thing, and that he was much