rom room to room, and to go
thundering down the inclined plains, regardless of the crash that
usually awaited us at the bottom! If I could have played foot-ball on
the Common with my Frank and Billy Babcock, life could have offered me
no greater joy at that period. As the prejudices of society forbid this
sport, I revenged myself by driving hoop all around the mall without
stopping, which the boys could _not_ do.

I can remember certain happy evenings, when we snuggled in sofa corners
and planned tricks and ate stolen goodies, and sometimes Frank would put
his curly head in my lap and let me stroke it when he was tired. What
the girls did I don't recollect; their domestic plays were not to my
taste, and the only figure that stands out from the dimness of the past
is that jolly boy with a twinkling eye. This memory would be quite
radiant but for one sad thing--a deed that cut me to the soul then, and
which I have never quite forgiven in all these years.

On one occasion I did something very naughty, and when called up for
judgment fled to the dining-room, locked the door, and from my
stronghold defied the whole world. I could have made my own terms, for
it was near dinner time and the family must eat; but, alas for the
treachery of the human heart! Frank betrayed me. He climbed in at the
window, unlocked the door, and delivered me up to the foe. Nay, he even
defended the base act, and helped bear the struggling culprit to
imprisonment. That nearly broke my heart, for I believed _he_ would
stand by me as staunchly as I always stood by him. It was a sad blow,
and I couldn't love or trust him any more. Peanuts and candy,
ginger-snaps and car-rides were unavailing; even foot-ball could not
reunite the broken friendship, and to this day I recollect the pang
that entered my little heart when I lost my faith in the loyalty of my
first boy.

The second attachment was of quite a different sort, and had a happier
ending. At the mature age of ten, I left home for my first visit to a
family of gay and kindly people in--well why not say right
out?--Providence. There were no children, and at first I did not mind
this, as every one petted me, especially one of the young men named
Christopher. So kind and patient, yet so merry was this good Christy
that I took him for my private and particular boy, and loved him dearly;
for he got me out of innumerable scrapes, and never was tired of amusing
the restless little girl who kept the fami