om beneath the coal-box and the other perched on the
top of the piano--with the well-known pictures to hide the dingy walls,
and these dear old friends, your books, higgledy-piggledy all over the
place--with the bits of old blue china that your mother prized, and the
screen she worked in those far by-gone days, when the sweet old face was
laughing and young, and the white soft hair tumbled in gold-brown curls
from under the coal-scuttle bonnet--

Ah, old screen, what a gorgeous personage you must have been in your
young days, when the tulips and roses and lilies (all growing from one
stem) were fresh in their glistening sheen! Many a summer and winter
have come and gone since then, my friend, and you have played with the
dancing firelight until you have grown sad and gray. Your brilliant
colors are fast fading now, and the envious moths have gnawed your
silken threads. You are withering away like the dead hands that wove
you. Do you ever think of those dead hands? You seem so grave and
thoughtful sometimes that I almost think you do. Come, you and I and
the deep-glowing embers, let us talk together. Tell me in your silent
language what you remember of those young days, when you lay on my
little mother's lap and her girlish fingers played with your rainbow
tresses. Was there never a lad near sometimes--never a lad who would
seize one of those little hands to smother it with kisses, and who would
persist in holding it, thereby sadly interfering with the progress of
your making? Was not your frail existence often put in jeopardy by this
same clumsy, headstrong lad, who would toss you disrespectfully aside
that he--not satisfied with one--might hold both hands and gaze up
into the loved eyes? I can see that lad now through the haze of the
flickering twilight. He is an eager bright-eyed boy, with pinching,
dandy shoes and tight-fitting smalls, snowy shirt frill and stock,
and--oh! such curly hair. A wild, light-hearted boy! Can he be the
great, grave gentleman upon whose stick I used to ride crosslegged, the
care-worn man into whose thoughtful face I used to gaze with childish
reverence and whom I used to call "father?" You say "yes," old screen;
but are you quite sure? It is a serious charge you are bringing. Can
it be possible? Did he have to kneel down in those wonderful smalls and
pick you up and rearrange you before he was forgiven and his curly head
smoothed by my mother's little hand? Ah! old screen, and did the lads