Only fancy!"

She laughed again and rode away. Mother came in just gasping.

"Well, for all His mercies, large and small, the Lord be praised!" she
cried piously, as she dropped into the big rocking chair. "THAT is
what I consider escaping by the skin of your teeth!"

Then father and Laddie laughed, and said they thought so too. When the
blinds were up, the outside looked well, and you should have seen the
inside! The woodwork was enamelled white, and the wall paper was
striped in white and silver. Every so far on the silver there was a
little pink moss rose having green leaves. The carpet was plum red and
green in wide stripes, and the lace curtains were freshly washed,
snowy, and touched the floor. The big rocker, the straight-backed
chairs, and the sofa were beautiful red mahogany wood, and the seats
shining haircloth. If no one happened to be looking, you could sit on
a sofa arm, stick your feet out and shoot off like riding down a
haystack; the landing was much better. On the sofa you bounced two
feet high the first time; one, the second; and a little way the third.
On the haystack, maybe you hit a soft spot, and maybe you struck a
rock. Sometimes if you got smart, and tried a new place, and your feet
caught in a tangle of weeds and stuck, you came up straight, pitched
over, and landed on your head. THEN if you struck a rock, you were
still, quite a while. I was once. But you never dared let mother see
you--on the sofa, I mean; she didn't care about the haystack.

There were pictures in oval black frames having fancy edges, and a
whatnot where all our Christmas and birthday gifts, almost too dainty
to handle, were kept. You fairly held your breath when you looked at
the nest of spun green glass, with the white dove in it, that George
Washington Mitchell gave to Shelley. Of course a dove's nest was never
deep, and round, and green, and the bird didn't have red eyes and a
black bill. I thought whoever could blow glass as beautifully as that,
might just as easy have made it right while he was at it; but anyway,
it was pretty. There were pitchers, mugs, and vases, almost too
delicate to touch, and the cloth-covered box with braids of hair coiled
in wreaths from the heads of the little fever and whooping cough
sisters.

Laddie asked Sally if she and Peter were going to have the ceremony
performed while they sat on the sofa. Seemed the right place. They
had done all their courting there, even on