" she grumbled, in a disaffected undertone,
and shoved it to the centre of the floor, where it had always stood
during her own sway. She cast a discerning glance up among the strings
of herbs and peppers hanging from above, and examined the shelves where
the simple stores for table use were arranged in earthen-ware bowls or
gourds--all with an air of vague dissatisfaction. She presently stepped
into the shed-room, and there looked over the piles of quilts. They
were in order, certainly, but placed in a different method from her own;
another woman's hand had been at work, and she was jealous of its very
touch among these familiar old things to which she seemed positively
akin. "I wonder how I made out ter bide so long on the mounting," she
said; and with the recollection of the long-haired Absalom there was
another gush of tears and sobs, which she stifled as she could in one
of the old quilts that held many of her own stitches and was soothing to
touch.

The infantile Kittredge, who was evidently not born to blush unseen,
seemed to realize that he had failed to attract the attention of the
three absorbed Quimbeys who sat about the fire. He blithely addressed
himself to another effort. He suddenly whisked himself over on
all-fours, and with a certain ursine aspect went nimbly across the
hearth, still holding up his downy yellow head, his pink face agrin,
and alluringly displaying his two facetious teeth. He caught the rung of
Tim's chair, and lifted himself tremulously to an upright posture. And
then it became evident that he was about to give an exhibition of
the thrilling feat of walking around a chair. With a truly Kittredge
perversity he had selected the one that had the savage Timothy seated
in it. For an instant the dark-browed face scowled down into his
unaffrighted eyes: it seemed as if Tim might kick him into the fire.
The next moment he had set out to circumnavigate, as it were. What a
prodigious force he expended upon it! How he gurgled and grinned and
twisted his head to observe the effect upon the men, all sedulously
gazing into the fire! how he bounced, and anon how he sank with sudden
genuflections! how limber his feet seemed, and what free agents! Surely
he never intended to put them down at that extravagant angle. More than
once one foot was placed on top of the other--an attitude that impeded
locomotion and resulted in his sitting down in an involuntary manner and
with some emphasis. With an appalling t