and knit by fire-light, and, part of the land bein' piny woods, we had
a good lot of knots that were as bright as lamps for all we wanted.
Then we had a dozen chickens, and by pains and care they laid pretty
well, and the eggs were as good as gold. So we lived through the first
year after father died, pretty well.

Anybody that couldn't get along with mother and Major (I always called
Mary Jane "Major" when I was real little, and the name kind of stayed
by) couldn't get along with anybody. I was as happy as a cricket
whilst they were by, though, to speak truth, I wasn't naturally so
chirpy as they were; I took after father more, who was a kind of a
despondin' man, down-hearted, never thinkin' things could turn out
right, or that he was goin' to have any luck. That was my natur', and
mother see it, and fought ag'inst it like a real Bunker-Hiller; but
natur' is hard to root up, and there was always times when I wanted to
sulk away into a corner and think nobody wanted me, and that I was
poor and humbly, and had to work for my living.

I remember one time I'd gone up into my room before tea to have one of
them dismal fits. Miss Perrit had been in to see mother, and she'd
been tellin' over what luck Nancy'd had down to Hartford: how't she
had gone into a shop, and a young man had been struck with her good
looks, an' he'd turned out to be a master-shoemaker, and Nancy was
a-goin' to be married, and so on, a rigmarole as long as the moral
law,--windin' up with askin' mother why she didn't send us girls off
to try our luck, for Major was as old as Nance Perrit. I'd waited to
hear mother say, in her old bright way, that she couldn't afford it,
and she couldn't spare us, if she had the means, and then I flung up
into our room, that was a lean-to in the garret, with a winder in the
gable end, and there I set down by the winder with my chin on the