The tear-blinded eyes were shut again; Judith had been looking into the fire as she talked; she was afraid to look up into her mother’s eyes. It was being brave to look into the fire. “I see a room up-stairs, a room with a slanting roof and only one window; the window looks down into the garden; it has a green paper shade tied up with a cord; there is a strip of rag-carpet before the bed, that is all the carpet there is; and there’s a funny old wash-stand with a blue bowl sunk down into a hole on the top, and a towel on the rail of the wash-stand with a red border—in winter a pipe comes up in the stove-pipe hole from the big stove in the sitting-room, but there’s ice in the pitcher very often; there’s a bureau with a cracked looking-glass on the top, an old bureau, everything is old but the little girl kneeling on the rag-carpet rug beside the bed, with her head on the red and white quilt, saying her prayers. That little girl is _you_, mother, a sweet, obedient little girl, that hasn’t a will of her own, and tempers, and tantrums like me.” “I like to think that sweet little girl is you.” “Then it _is_ me; I’ve grown sweet in a hurry,” Judith laughed, “and left all my tempers and tantrums far behind.” “There’s another T to go with them—_temptations_—through which you grow strong.” Not seeming to heed, but in reality holding her mother’s thought in her heart Judith ran merrily on: “And I see a church, with a little green in front, and posts to hitch the horses, the two church doors are wide open, for in the picture it is Sunday morning; Aunt Rody is in the head of a pew in the body of the church, and Aunt Affy sits next, and Uncle Cephas is next the door, and there’s a girl between Aunt Affy and Uncle Cephas, a girl fifteen years old and her hair is braided, not in long, babyish curls—” “Oh, my little girl, wear your curls as long as you can, because mother loves them,” her mother urged, bending forward to touch the soft, bright hair.