respect to capital letters too.

After a few weeks, Grandma said she must have Ann again; and back she
went. Grandma was very feeble lately, and everybody humored her. Mrs.
Polly was sorry to have the little girl leave her. She said it was
wonderful how much she had improved. But she would not have admitted
that the improvement was owing to the different influence she had been
under; she said Ann had outgrown her mischievous ways.

Grandma did not live very long after this, however. Mrs. Polly had
her bound girl at her own disposal in a year's time. Poor Ann was
sorrowful enough for a long while after Grandma's death. She wore the
beloved gold beads round her neck, and a sad ache in her heart. The
dear old woman had taken the beads off her neck with her own hands
and given them to Ann before she died, that there might be no mistake
about it.

Mrs. Polly said she was glad Ann had them. "You might jist as well
have 'em as Dorcas's girl," said she; "she set enough sight more by
you."

Ann could not help growing cheerful again, after a while. Affairs in
Mrs. Polly's house were much brighter for her, in some ways, than they
had ever been before.

Either the hot iron of affliction had smoothed some of the puckers out
of her mistress's disposition, or she was growing, naturally, less
sharp and dictatorial. Any way, she was becoming as gentle and loving
with Ann as it was in her nature to be, and Ann, following her
impulsive temper, returned all the affection with vigor, and never
bestowed a thought on past unpleasantness.

For the next two years, Ann's position in the family grew to be more
and more that of a daughter. If it had not been for the indentures,
lying serenely in that tall wooden desk, she would almost have
forgotten, herself, that she was a bound girl.

One spring afternoon, when Ann was about sixteen years old, her
mistress called her solemnly into the fore-room. "Ann," said she,
"come here, I want to speak to you."

Nabby stared wonderingly; and Ann, as she obeyed, felt awed. There was
something unusual in her mistress's tone.

Standing there in the fore-room, in the august company of the best
bed, with its high posts and flowered-chintz curtains, the best chest
of drawers, and the best chairs, Ann listened to what Mrs. Polly had
to tell her. It was a plan which almost took her breath away; for it
was this: Mrs. Polly proposed to adopt her, and change her name to
Wales. She would be no longer Ann Gin