. It was "Please see if the fire needs more wood,"
or "Let the cat in, please," or "I'd like you to weed the pansy bed
before supper-time."

In these circumstances, life hardly seemed worth living. I decided that
I had made a mistake in choosing my family. It did not appreciate me,
and it failed to make my young life glad. I knew my young life ought to
be glad. And it was not. It was drab, as drab as Toot's old rain-coat.

Toot was "our coloured boy." That is the way we described him. Father
had brought him home from the war, and had sent him to school, and
then apprenticed him to a miller. Toot did "chores" for his board and
clothes, but was soon to be his own man, and to be paid money by the
miller, and to marry Tulula Darthula Jones, a nice coloured girl who
lived with the Cutlers.

The time had been when Toot had been my self-appointed slave. Almost my
first recollections were of his carrying me out to see the train pass,
and saying, "Toot, toot!" in imitation of the locomotive; so, although
he had rather a splendid name, I called him "Toot," and the whole town
followed my example. Yes, the time had been when Toot saw me safe to
school, and slipped little red apples into my pocket, and took me out
while he milked the cow, and told me stories and sang me plantation
songs. Now, when he passed, he only nodded. When I spoke to him about
his not giving me any more apples, he said:

"Ah reckon they're your pa's apples, missy. Why, fo' goodness' sake,
don' yo' he'p yo'se'f?"

But I did not want to help myself. I wanted to be helped--not because
I was lazy, but because I wanted to be adored. I was really a sort of
fairy princess,--misplaced, of course, in a stupid republic,--and I
wanted life conducted on a fairy-princess basis. It was a game I wished
to play, but it was one I could not play alone, and not a soul could I
find who seemed inclined to play it with me.

Well, things went from bad to worse. I decided that if mother no longer
loved me, I would no longer tell her things. So I did not. I got a
hundred in spelling for twelve days running, and did not tell her!
I broke Edna Grantham's mother's water-pitcher, and kept the fact a
secret. The secret was, indeed, as sharp-edged as the pieces of the
broken pitcher had been; I cried under the bedclothes, thinking how
sorry Mrs. Grantham had been, and that mother really ought to know.
Only what was the use? I no longer looked to her to help me out of my
troubles.