That Old-Time Child, Roberta | Page 3

a literal view of things, she was constantly
saying to Mrs. Marsden:
"That child's imagination will get away with her, Julia, if you don't
check it. It will, indeed."
And she had a way of making the child repeat over and over again
descriptions of things that had struck her fancy, and cutting here and
there until the description didn't seem applicable at all to the places she
had seen.
"I feel just like the old woman in Mother Goose, Auntie," Roberta
would say, her eyes full of vexed tears, "when she woke up on the
king's highway and found her petticoats were cut off."
"But truth is truth, child," said Aunt Betsy.
Aunt Betsy's intensely realistic temperament could not understand that
fine, exquisite perception God had given the little girl, which enabled
her to see beauty that others, differently organized, would never see,
nor, believe was there.

The house, where four generations of Mrs. Marsden's family had lived,
was home-like, but quaint and unpretentious. It had a very solid look
and was in thorough repair, for the family were thrifty and well-to-do
always. Luxuriant vines of the Virginia creeper grew on the sides of the
house and around the pillars of the porches. Wandering tendrils hung
from the eaves and crept in the second-story windows. There was a
wild-brier rose there that had been planted by Mrs. Marsden's
grandmother. It partook somewhat of the nature of the old lady; nothing
could keep it from doing its duty. It filled the air with fragrance in its
season, and was a mass of delicate pink flower cups.
Inside of the old house were many little nooks, and each nook haunted
by the spirit of some legendary story. As is the case in all houses where
successive generations of the same family have lived and died, ghostly
visitants came at certain times, so the negroes said, rang bells softly at
dead of night, tipped across the floor with but the echo of a step, jostled
medicine bottles together and did many curious things. Roberta, brave
as she was and sensible as she was, would actually cover up her head
with the bedclothes, and nearly smother for fear she would hear the
bells and ghostly steps.
Mam' Sara was the only one of the negroes who didn't believe in ghosts.
"No, indeed, honey," she would say to Roberta, "daid fo'ks don' never
cum bak. If they gits ter Heaven, they don' wan'er, and if they gits ter
de udder place they can't. The devil won' never let 'em git away frum
him, kase he's wuk so hard ter git 'em."
The part of the house of most interest to Roberta was the parlor, where
were stored the heir-looms of the family, a spinet with all the ivory
worn off the keys, two pier-glasses with brass claws for feet, and a
clock so tall and big she actually hid in it once when she was playing
"hide and go seek" with some little visitors, who said they had seen a
clock "larger."
Roberta was a very amiable child, but old Squire said she "wuz techus
erbout sum things." And the old clock must have been one of the
things.

The chairs were brought from Virginia on the backs of mules, and the
covers on them embroidered by the little girl's grandmother. The same
busy hands that superintended the manufacture of those piles of linen
sheets stored away in the presses above stairs, and the counterpanes
woven with the American eagle in the center, bunches of hollyhocks
and sweet pea in the corners, and trumpet vines running along the
edges.
The paper on the walls of the parlor was a curiosity. It was imported
from England many, many years before Roberta's mother was born,
because her grandfather saw a room somewhere, I think in Baltimore,
that had similar paper, and he took such a fancy to it he ordered some
from the same place. The paper was wrought in great panels, with
life-size figures of orientals in the center. They were terrible looking
men, the children thought. They had swarthy skins and beards down to
their waists, and fierce eyes that flashed out beneath their turbans with
a fe-fo-fi-fum look.
Those fierce eyes were the cause of no little alarm, I can assure you,
when darkness swooped down upon Roberta and Polly and Dilsy,
playing Lady-come-to-see in the old parlor in childlike
unconsciousness of the passage of time. Polly, the imp, would always
insist upon singing "Lady Jane Grey," as they tiptoed backward out of
the room. They did not dare to look away, for fear those terrible men
would fly at them when they were not looking and throttle them with
their long, bony fingers, so they joined hands and sung as they tiptoed
backward:
Lady