g-one"--had heard herself so described more than once. She did not
like the phrase; "queer" was not so bad--perhaps she was queer--but she
had an instinctive repugnance to being called a young-one. Birds and
rabbits had young-ones and she was neither feathered nor furred.

So very few of the neighborhood children were invited to the shaded
interior of the old surrey. Her dolls--all five of them--spent a good
deal of time there and David, the tortoise-shell cat, came often,
usually under compulsion. When David had kittens, which interesting
domestic event took place pretty frequently, he--or she--positively
refused to be an occupant of that surrey, growling and scratching in a
decidedly ungentlemanly--or unladylike--manner. Twice Mary-'Gusta had
attempted to make David more complacent by bringing the kittens also to
the surrey, but their parent had promptly and consecutively seized
them by the scruff of their necks and laboriously lugged them up to the
haymow again.

Just now, however, there being no kittens, David was slumbering in
a furry heap beside Mary-'Gusta at one end of the carriage seat, and
Rosette, the smallest of the five dolls, and Rose, the largest, were
sitting bolt upright in the corner at the other end. The christening of
the smallest and newest doll was the result of a piece of characteristic
reasoning on its owner's part. She was very fond of the name Rose, the
same being the name of the heroine in "Eight Cousins," which story Mrs.
Bailey, housekeeper before last for Marcellus Hall, had read aloud to
the child. When the new doll came, at Christmas time, Mary-'Gusta wished
that she might christen it Rose also. But there was another and much
beloved Rose already in the family. So Mary-'Gusta reflected and
observed, and she observed that a big roll of tobacco such as her
stepfather smoked was a cigar; while a little one, as smoked by Eben
Keeler, the grocer's delivery clerk, was a cigarette. Therefore, the big
doll being already Rose, the little one became Rosette.

Mary-'Gusta was not playing with Rose and Rosette at the present time.
Neither was she interested in the peaceful slumbers of David. She was
not playing at all, but sitting, with feet crossed beneath her on the
seat and hands clasped about one knee, thinking. And, although she was
thinking of her stepfather who she knew had gone away to a vague place
called Heaven--a place variously described by Mrs. Bailey, the former
housekeeper, and by Mr