In high spirits, then, with the certainty of a late breakfast and no school, she now lay on the pillows, looking across with sparkling eyes at last night's little gray ridge of ashes under the bars of her small grate. Those hearthstones!--when her bare soles accidentally touched one on winter mornings, Gabriella was of the opinion that they were the coldest bricks that ever came from a fiery furnace. There was one thing in the room still colder: the little cherrywood washstand away over on the other side of the big room between the windows,--placed there at the greatest possible distance from the fire! Sometimes when she peeped down into her wash-pitcher of mornings, the ice bulged up at her like a white cannon-ball that had gotten lodged on the way out. She jabbed at it with the handle of her toothbrush; or, if her temper got the best of her (or the worst), with the poker. Often her last act at night was to dry her toothbrush over the embers so that the hair in it would not be frozen in the morning. Gabriella raised her head from the pillows and peeped over at the counterpane covering her. It consisted of stripes of different colors, starting from a point at the middle of the structure and widening toward the four sides. Her feet were tucked away under a bank of plum color sprinkled with salt; up her back ran a sort of comet's tail of puddled green. Over her shoulder and descending toward her chin, flowed a broadening delta of well-beaten egg. She was thankful for these colors. The favorite hue of the farmer's wife was lead. Those hearthstones--lead! The strip of oilcloth covering the washstand--lead! The closet in the wall containing her things--lead! The stair-steps outside--lead! The porches down below--lead! Gabriella sometimes wondered whether this woman might not have had lead-colored ancestors.