ing, and to dare to stretch out one's legs and move without
thinking what one was going to hit. "Sophie is a good girl," he would
say, "and wants to have everything right, but you see they won't let
her. They've loaded her with so many things that have to be kept in
lavender, that the poor girl is actually getting thin and losing her
health; and then, you see, there's Aunt Zeruah, she mounts guard at our
house, and keeps up such strict police-regulations that a fellow can't
do a thing. The parlors are splendid, but so lonesome and dismal!--not a
ray of sunshine, in fact not a ray of light, except when a visitor is
calling, and then they open a crack. They're afraid of flies, and yet,
dear knows, they keep every looking-glass and picture-frame muffled to
its throat from March to December. I'd like for curiosity to see what a
fly would do in our parlors!"

"Well," said I, "can't you have some little family sitting-room, where
you can make yourselves cozy?"

"Not a bit of it. Sophie and Aunt Zeruah have fixed their throne up in
our bedroom, and there they sit all day long, except at calling-hours,
and then Sophie dresses herself and comes down. Aunt Zeruah insists upon
it that the way is to put the whole house in order, and shut all the
blinds, and sit in your bedroom, and then, she says, nothing gets out of
place; and she tells poor Sophie the most hocus-pocus stories about her
grandmothers and aunts, who always kept everything in their houses so
that they could go and lay their hands on it in the darkest night. I'll
bet they could in our house. From end to end it is kept looking as if we
had shut it up and gone to Europe,--not a book, not a paper, not a
glove, or any trace of a human being, in sight. The piano shut tight,
the bookcases shut and locked, the engravings locked up, all the drawers
and closets locked. Why, if I want to take a fellow into the library, in
the first place it smells like a vault, and I have to unbarricade
windows, and unlock and rummage for half an hour before I can get at
anything; and I know Aunt Zeruah is standing tiptoe at the door, ready
to whip everything back and lock up again. A fellow can't be social, or
take any comfort in showing his books and pictures that way. Then
there's our great, light dining-room, with its sunny south
windows,--Aunt Zeruah got us out of that early in April, because she
said the flies would speck the frescos and get into the china-closet,
and we have been eating