yes was a danger and a pain. I made no
attempt to "entertain him." Seated upon a high chair, my feet swinging
dolefully six inches above the floor, I fingered the wretched
cedar-ball, redolent of rosin through much bruising, my pink sunbonnet
hanging from the knotted strings to the small of my back, and with
difficulty refrained from crying. I had never been wretched just in that
way before. Two imperative duties had met plump and face to face, with a
shock that jarred all preconceived principles of belief and action out
of plumb. Cousin Molly Belle had trusted me to keep her secret, and I
saw no way of doing it except to lie outright and repeatedly. The sin
lashed my conscience until I could have located in my corporeal frame
the exact whereabouts of the uncomfortable possession. So absorbed was I
by individual upbraidings that Flora's barefaced fabrication of the
search her young mistress and she had had for the runaway passed
unrebuked by so much as a look. It was no comfort to me to hear another
person lie even more glibly than myself. Flora was an ignorant colored
person, I, a baptized white child of the covenant who could read the
Bible for herself.

Mr. Morton tried to make me talk by well-concerted questions. Children
are best approached through the interrogative mood. It offers just so
many nails set in a sure place upon which to hang conversation. He was a
handsome, well-set-up young fellow, and, if somewhat graver by nature
and habit than most of Cousin Molly Belle's beaux, suited my taste best
of them all. Yesterday I should have been tickled clean out of the
proprieties by the chance of talking to him all by myself for twenty
minutes, sitting up in Aunt Eliza's parlor, just like grown folks.

The twenty minutes were like one hundred in sloth and weight before the
tap of high heels on the oaken stairs and the swish of skirts against
the banisters advised us who was coming.

She walked into the room with her head high and chin level; her eyes
shone and her coloring was superb. She had never been more beautiful,
and never so dignified. Her admirer felt both of these facts, and was
moved to mute inquiry into the cause of the singular mood. His glowing
eyes questioned hers while she shook hands with him and then sat down,
and held out her hand silently to me, without a smile. I went as
straight to her as a wounded bird to shelter, dropped upon a stool
beside her and rested my cheek against her knee, my hand in