Sister’s deceits, as I have said, were such funny ones; they never deceived any one--were never really intended to; they were only desperate measures resorted to when in a tight place, their drollery usually serving to protect her from punishment. As a rule she and Brother managed to quarrel when left to their own devices. I played the peace-maker between them, and have done it ever since. One Sunday, when we stayed home from church, they got into a wrangle. Spiteful words led to threats, and Kate was soon chasing Arthur round the room in childish rage, I trying to intervene. In the squabble my belt fell off--a black shiny belt with a metal buckle. As Kate could not reach Arthur, she grabbed up my belt and, brandishing it in the air, chased him, trying to hit him. Crash! went the buckle against the rosewood mirror. When Father and Mother came home and saw that crack in the mirror, they saw also three guilty apprehensive children. Brother and Sister pitched in, telling about the quarrel, who did this, and who did that. “I don’t care about who started it, or who kept it up,” said Father, “I want to know who broke that looking-glass--the one to blame for that will be punished.” “Genie is to blame for it,” Kate promptly rejoined. Father looked at me in surprise, Arthur opened his mouth in wonderment, while I stood dumb and guilty-looking beyond question. Then Kate added: “Arthur hit me, and I chased him with the belt, and the buckle broke the glass, _and it was Genie’s belt-buckle_!” She escaped punishment. We had fewer playthings than children have nowadays, but for that very reason they meant more to us. I had but two dolls in my childhood and one is still--living, I was about to say. One was a leather-head doll, with painted cheeks, black hair, and blue, blue eyes. But in the beginning of her career she met a strange fate--a boy much bigger than I snatched her from me and bit off her nose before my very eyes! This was one of my earliest griefs. I hated that boy but cherished the noseless doll for many years. Later Kate and I had big wax dolls whose eyes would open and shut and who would cry when we pressed a little place in the pit of the stomach. We played with them only on state occasions. They were kept up in the “front bedroom” in a bureau drawer. I saw them a year ago. They had on the same scarlet wool dresses trimmed with narrow black velvet ribbon, but the dresses were moth-eaten and the dolls showed the ravages of time.