“Thella Armitage, you do look like a little Indian! Oh, what shall I do?” her chin beginning to quiver again; but presently she rested her face on her hand, and sat gazing at the fleecy clouds chasing each other across the sky, and wandered off into dreamland; these were her soldiers, and the great white cloud with a rose-colored border was her chariot, and she was going: “Thella! Thella Armitage! If you don’t come down here and wash these dishes I’ll skin you,” called her stepmother, up the stairs. “All right, maybe a decent skin would grow on then,” muttered Thella. She went down into the hot kitchen and washed the dishes; but every minute she stole a glance at her pretty clouds through the open window. “What are you gawping at? ’tend to your work,” said Mrs. Armitage crossly. She did not mean to be actually unkind, but she had no appreciation of another’s feelings, much less of Thella’s dreamy, poetic temperament. Thella shot her an angry look, and sullenly went on with her work, the beauty all taken out of the clouds, her fairylike day dreams buried in gloom. No sooner were the dishes washed than Thella was set to knit her stint; oh, how she hated that interminable stocking! The rounds seemed endless; and if she thought about something nice for just one little minute the stitches would drop and run away down; then Mrs. Armitage would angrily yank the stocking out of her hand, pull the needles out, and ravel out all her evening’s work. When at last the hateful task was accomplished, and the old clock sitting in its little niche in the wall—like a miniature shrine for the Virgin Mary—rang out its nine slow strokes, she would run up to the old east chamber where she slept, in an agony of stifled rage. Mrs. Armitage would allow her only a small bit of candle: “You’re not going to read those good-for-nothing books; you jest go to bed and go to sleep; I want you to be fit for something in the morning.” So she was forced to hurry in between the sheets, after blowing out the light, often to lie there wakeful; dreaming such lovely, impossible dreams by the hour. On moonless nights the skurry of a rat, or the cracking of the old timbers in cold weather, would send little shivers creeping up and down her back; but when the silvery moon shone in at the curtainless window she would lie wide-eyed, riding to strange, unheard of countries on its silver bars. One happy day a neighbor loaned her the “Arabian Knights;” she hurried through her tasks, which were neither short nor easy, and ran joyously up to the garret; a pane of glass had been broken, and a pewee had flown in and built her nest in an old basket suspended from the rafters. So careful was Thella not to frighten the mother bird, that she fearlessly sat on the window-sill and called to her four little children: “Phebe! Phebe!” Thella rested her chin on her hand thoughtfully: “I don’t see how you know them apart if they are all named Phebe,” said she.