When I looked out the window it wasn't wooden boxes, nailed firmly together into the shape of a short stairway, that I saw; I saw blessed relief from the constant, demanding presence of a sweet little tyrant who was happy only so long as I was giving her my full attention. "It's absolutely beautiful," I said fervently. Donna learned very quickly to navigate on her new steps. For the first few days she came in the window and went out, over and over again, gurgling with glee at the unconventionality of this means of entrance and exit. After the novelty of that had worn off, she began making daring excursions along the entire length of the four foot strip, which Grant had cleared of weeds and covered with gravel. David's kittens usually scampered along with her. My principal worry, after she had reached the point where she was playing out in her little yard for hours daily, was that she would see a black widow outside and pick it up. I tried to teach her to be afraid of all insects, but somehow the idea became twisted in her mind. "Bug scarda Donna!" she would exclaim. "Bug see Donna, bug run way!" And she would rush ferociously at whatever bug had, by its appearance, inspired her remarks. Usually the insects could escape her small clumsy fingers, but occasionally she caught an unwary slug or ladybug. I thought of warning her, "Bug might bite Donna," but it occurred to me that she might get that warning, too, twisted. Anyway, the one crowning virtue of black widows is that they're as much afraid of people as people are of them; and I didn't think there was much danger that she'd ever be able to catch one. A glimpse of a child with a face apparently made of brown hair should have been enough to send any bug scurrying for cover, I thought. Donna's hair, although it was growing longer and thicker rapidly, was still too fine and soft to hold a bobby pin, or to submit itself to any kind of confinement that I had yet been able to discover. One day, though, I found that the front part of her hair--the part that screened her eyes from sight most of the time, the part that I had refused to trim into neat bangs--was long enough to braid. Since then she has had a prim little pigtail right in the middle of her forehead--drawn back and secured at the top of her head with a pert bow. She looks very chic now, and her nickname--Little Chief Hair-in-the-Face--has been tucked away into our mental chest of souvenirs.