When Grandmamma Was New: The Story of a Virginia Childhood

Done With

sly as if the flames had kindled upon me, and not upon my hapless playfellow. What followed is a hazy kaleidoscope, lurid and vague, until m

raculous doll-baby, as she grew and glowed into an entity under the fingers of my best-beloved crony. She was a blonde after she ceased to be a blank. Her eyes were blue, her cheeks were shaded carmine; she had a real nose raised above the dead level of her

ght purple French calico frock that could be taken off at night and put on in the morning, and sure enough undercloth

t change the name for her maker's gentle remonstr

p snugly under three blankets inside of my reversed cricket by the dining-room fire. The attention was well meant, and he could not be expected to know that to drag sickly Musidora by the left leg through the mud until the infirm member parted company with the body, and to finish the journey with the head between his teeth, was not a happy device by

eturn home, the qu

e hillside beyond the Old Orchard. Mr. Bray had gone to Ohio along with the big covered wagon. Alexander the Great went with him in the carriage. With tears in her sweet eyes, my mother told me ho

to my castle, my red cloak over my head, and we had to shut the door to exclude the slant sheets of rain. All gathered in the upper end of the room where my chair stood, the only seat there except the floor. To the accompaniment of hissing rain and angry winds, the gruesome particulars of the t

h of Mol

nothing except the evolution

o' we-alls was to get bu'nt or cripple', or pufformed, or ennything like that, she's jes' pray all night an' all day-'Good Lord, take 'em! Heavenly Marster! put 'em out o' they mizzry!' An' Ung' Jack, he say, seem

, heard the sobs I tried to stifle with the bedclothes, and came to me with talk of the dear Sa

missed and grieved for the companion of those three

what must be do

s. Mary 'Liza was amused, in an amiable way, when she saw the bundle done

f hurting her. But I suppose you can't hurt Musidora. Why don't y

hand over the unfeatured face. "Mam' Chloe says, 'Handsome is as ha

y when Mary 'Liza's breathing assured me that she was asleep. It also confirmed my

ase. It was scarred in many places by fire and smoke. No amount of scrubbing could quite efface the traces of the catastrophe. I looked at them for a long time before beginning my sad task, and did not shrink from the sight. My state of mind was distinct

it with a pair of blunt scissors. Mariposa had described a winding-sheet minutely to me, and I meant that my dead doll-baby should be decently laid out. The notching took a tedious time, and the bows of the blunt scissors left purple furrows upon thumb and fingers. Uncle Ike had given me an empty raisin box. I lined it with Musidora's own mattress and quilt, spread the "pinked" cambric on them, laid the remain

en the sun reached the "noonmark" my father had, to please me, cut in the fence by the playhouse door. They would be there in force and on time. I would get myself and burden out of the end door of the north wing and steal around the yard

ul. I chose four boys of uniform size for pall-bearers; Barratier was to have a spade ready and to dig the grave, and when it was filled in we would sing a hymn. Mournin

per room came to me I acted upon it. Tripping up the narrow stairs, I pushed hard against the door. It stuck in the frame, and I was fearing it might be locked when it gave way suddenly and I almost fell into the chamber. It was a dreary place, although the spring sunshine poured broadly from wall to wall. The charred brands of the fire that had wrought such woe were cold in the corners of the hearth, having toppled, head-foremost and backward,

hed a little way back from it, and half-way between the fireplace and a window in the gable was the rocking-chair my mother had occupied while she held Lucy on her lap. Faded calico covered the seat, a valance of the same hung about the legs; two of the upright spindles were missing from the back. I took in every feature of the haunted room before I rushed over to the wall where the bonnets hung, climbed upon a chair, grabbed the black bonnet, and espying a black

, and bushes of lilacs and snowballs almost in bloom, just as they had looked before I went up to the lumber-room. The serene naturalness of it all

k descended to my shoulder-blades and flapped at the sides like the wings of a dejected crow. I had made a mourning-cloak of the apron by tying it, hind part before, about my neck, whence it drooped to my heels. Mariposa said-respectful of the gen

l, who carried her baby-a very young one-over her shoulder, its head wobbling helplessly as she walked. The rest came a

s. Long streamers of brier and wild berry bushes, purple and ashy with the mantling sap drawn upward by the March sunshine, were matted over the older graves; a spreading "honey-shuck" tree aros

tooped and laid the casket in the eighteen-inch-deep hole with our bare hands. But lowered it was in funereal style, and covered with apple blossoms, before the bearers returned the black earth to the excavation and mounded it into proper shape. I stood at the head of the grave, my handkerchief at my eyes, trying with all my might to feel sorry enough to cry. The excitement of th

s accomplished commendable snivels. An embarrassing halt brought down my handkerchief and hushed audible mourning. The affair was not

ter be a p

ficiating clergyman appeared in committing "dust to dust, ashes to ashes." But there was the fea

t thars a pra'ar!" Marip

I lifted both hands an

out end, Am

tion I had obeyed was a felicitous touch. She pressed still closer to me, mindful o

solemn 'casion will

and "lined out" the hymn I had pitched upon as

n read my

ons in t

carried it, the rest of the

farewell t

my weep

in a nasal

in sailing before

y weeping e

y weeping

arewell to

my weep

within the enclosure,-a long-drawn cry, repeated while we star

to recover the use of

o her nimble heels at a rate that made it impossible f

eft all