Uncle Joseph, Aunt Charlotte, Herbert Langley, had all come, and as the latter leaped upon the ground and I caught a sight of his tall, slender figure, I involuntarily exclaimed, “Long-legs,” a cognomen, which he ever after retained in our family. Shaking down his pants, he went through with a kind of shuffle not wholly unlike the Highland fling, ending his performance by kissing his hand to the group of _noses_ pressed close against the window-pane. “I shall like him,” was my mental comment, as I turned from him towards the bundle of clothes which Uncle Joseph lifted from the sleigh and deposited upon the steps, and which we supposed to be our dreaded aunt. “This is perfectly horrible,” were the first words which issued from under the folds of her veil; but to what she referred I never knew. We all knew and loved Uncle Joseph, and for his sake my mother conquered whatever of prejudice she felt towards his wife, who returned her cordial welcome with the extreme end of her forefinger, saying, when asked to sit down, “I’ll go to my room immediately, if you please.” “Speak to the children first,” suggested my uncle, and with a muttered, “It doesn’t matter,” the haughty lady bowed coldly to us, as one by one we were presented. When it came my turn, her small, black eyes rested longer upon me, and the faintest derisive smile imaginable curled the corners of her mouth. I knew that either my cap or my face had provoked that smile, and with tears in my eyes I was turning away, when Herbert Langley caught me in his long arms, exclaiming, “And so, this is Rosa, the poetess, I mean to call you little ‘Crop-head,’ may I?” He referred, I suppose, to a letter which I had once written in rhyme to my Uncle Joseph, but before, I could frame any reply, his mother said, scornfully, “Don’t be flattered, child—Herbert calls everything poetry that rhymes. He’ll learn to discriminate better as he grows older,” and with a stately sweep she left the room, saying, as she reached the rather steep and narrow stair-case, “Dear me—how funny—it’s like mounting a ladder.”