COUSIN MARY'S home was a little, old, brick house standing flush with the street. A woodshed where the cat slept in summer extended easterly from the house and in the angle thus formed was a diminutive garden where such old-fashioned flowers as holly-hocks, bachelors' buttons, sweet william and larkspur seemed to bloom earlier and last longer than elsewhere. Everything about Cousin Mary's home was on a small scale. She herself was a very small and slight old lady, but she had inherited from the hardy New England race from which she sprang a certain tradition of vitality and longevity which she lived long enough to exemplify in her own person. Other family legends of uncomfortable eccentricity and general worrisomeness she utterly disproved, for never was there a kindlier or more placid soul than she. Of course she wore a cap with lavender ribbons and gowns of black bombazine for every day and black silk with lace at the throat for great occasions. She seldom ventured out of doors, except into her garden, or, on such annual celebrations as Thanksgiving and Christmas, to a neighboring relative's home where she was with difficulty persuaded to take at dinner a glass of port or Madeira, though she always protested that she did not really need it. Most of her life was spent in the southeast downstairs sitting-room, where she used to sit in the smallest, oldest rocking-chair ever seen. On memorable occasions she would take possession of the kitchen, against the protests of Drusilla, her companion, and make gingerbread that was famous in the neighborhood, especially among the children. To childish imaginations there always seemed something mysterious about the rooms in Cousin Mary's house--doubtless merely because we never visited them,--except the sitting-room and the kitchen. The sitting-room communicated with another room--I think it was called the "parlor"--by folding doors. These were generally open, but in there the blinds were always closed and the room was in a kind of perpetual dusky twilight. We could dimly see within, but no recollection of entering remains, though there is a faint memory of an obscure marble-topped center-table--were there not wax flowers on it under a glass cover?--and ancient mahogany chairs.