name, and that when people said "Katie," it was a gentle way they
had of scolding.

Everybody petted her. Her brother Horace put his heart right under her
feet, and she danced over it. Her "uncle Eddard" said "she drove round
the world in a little chariot, and all her friends were harnessed to
it, only they didn't know it."

Her shoulders were very little, but they bore a crushing weight of
care. From the time she began to talk, she took upon herself the
burden of the whole family. When Mrs. Clifford had a headache, Flyaway
was so full of pity that nothing could keep her from climbing upon
the sufferer, stroking her face, and saying, "O, my _dee_ mamma," or
perhaps breaking the camphor bottle over her nose.

She sat at table in a high chair beside her father, and might have
learned good manners if it had not been for the care she felt of
Horace. She could scarcely attend to her own little knife and fork,
because she was so busy watching her brother. She wished to see for
herself that he was sitting straight, and not leaning his elbows on
the table. If he made any mistake she cried, "Hollis!" in a tone as
sweet as a wind-harp, though she meant it to be terribly severe,
adding to the effect by shaking the corn-silk on her head in high
displeasure. If she could correct him she thought she had done as much
good in the family as if she had behaved well herself. He received all
rebukes very meekly, with a "Thank you, little Topknot. What would be
done here without you to preserve order?"

Flyaway could remember as far back as the beginning of the
world,--that is to say, she could remember when _her_ world began.

It is strange to think of, but the first thing she really knew for a
certainty, she was standing in a yellow chair, in her grandmother
Parlin's kitchen! It was as if she had always been asleep till that
minute. People did say she had once been a baby, but she could not
recollect that, "it was so MANY years ago."

Her mind, you see, had always been as soft as a bag of feathers; and
nothing that she did, or that any one else did, made much impression.
But now something remarkable was taking place, and she would never
forget it.

It was this: she was grinding coffee. How prettily it pattered down on
the floor! What did it look like? O, like snuff, that people sneezed
with. This was housework. Next thing they would ask her to wash dishes
and set the table. She would grow larger and larger, and Gracie would
grow