me
into a pattern daughter. It gives me a twinge to recollect how
thanklessly I accepted what must have been an act of self-denial on her
part, perhaps even a compromise with conscience. Mam' Chloe--by my
mother's orders, as I know now--hunted up some breadths of faded carpet
in the garret, Uncle Ike beat the dust out of them, then nailed them up
along the slatted side to keep the wind away. These I called my "arras,"
having picked up the word from hearing my father read Shakespeare aloud
at night after we were in the trundle-bed. Other breadths covered the
rough flooring, and I had a castle of which I was the undisputed
mistress--a court where I reigned, a queen.

Enthroned in a backless chair, I was, by turns, Mrs. Burwell (my own
mother), Helen Maurice's Aunt Felix, Rosamond's mother, Rebecca, the
Lady Rowena (my father began _Ivanhoe_ in January), Mrs. Fairchild,
Deborah, Mrs. Murray of _Anna Ross_, Naomi, and Ophelia. Once, I "did"
Job by wrapping a meal-sack--for sackcloth--about me, and, sitting upon
the ground, throwing ashes over my head and into the air, the while
four colored boys, previously instructed, burst in one by one, with news
of the mischief wrought by Sabean, lightning, Chaldean, and cyclone. A
dramatization of Queen Esther, upon which I had set my heart, was, at
last, given up because I could not be King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther at
one and the same time.

When the castle was too bleak for even child-comfort, Aunt 'Ritta, the
cook, let us heat bricks in the kitchen fire, and showed us how to wrap
them in rags to keep in the warmth. Clad in my red cloak, a wadded hood
of the same color tied over my ears, and my feet upon a swathed brick, I
was in no danger of taking cold.

Mary 'Liza put her neat little nose in at the door one raw day when she
was walking for exercise, and wondered, gently, "how I could stand it."

"I am afraid the smell would give me a headache, and the cold would give
me a sore throat," she said still gently.

I never had either from the time the leaves fell until they came again.
Except when, about once a month, some matron from a near or distant
plantation brought one or more of her children with her when she drove
over to "spend the day" with my mother, I had no white playfellow near
my own age. Mary 'Liza "was not fond of playing," although she would do
it when we had company who could be entertained in no other way. As a
rule, when not engaged with lessons and chemises,