The Purple Heights

Author of Slippy McGee. A Woman Named Smith, etc.
To JOHN NORTON OEMLER FROM THE LADY HIS SON USED TO CALL MRS. DADDY
PETER CHAMPNEYS: Of Riverton, South Carolina, and Paris, France . MARIA CHAMPNEYS: His Mother . CHADWICK CHAMPNEYS: The God in the Machine . EMMA CAMPBELL: A Colored Woman . ANNE CHAMPNEYS, NÉE NANCY SIMMS: Cinderella . MRS. JOHN HEMINGWAY: Peter's First Teacher . JOHN HEMINGWAY: An American . JASON VANDERVELDE: An Attorney at Law . MRS. JASON VANDERVELDE: Anne's Mentor . MRS. MACGREGOR: A Disciple of Hannah More . GLENN MITCHELL: A Bright Shadow . BERKELEY HAYDEN: The Other Man . GRACIE: A Gutter-Candle . DENISE: A Perfume . THE QUARTIER LATIN. RIVERTON, SOUTH CAROLINA. THE CAROLINA COLORED FOLKS. MARTIN LUTHER: A Gray Cat . SATAN: A Black Cat . THE RED ADMIRAL: A Fairy .
The tiny brown house cuddling like a wren's nest on the edge of the longest and deepest of the tide-water coves that cut through Riverton had but four rooms in all,—the kitchen tacked to the back porch, after the fashion of South Carolina kitchens, the shed room in which Peter slept, the dining-room which was the general living-room as well, and his mother's room, which opened directly off the dining-room, and in which his mother sat all day and sometimes almost all night at her sewing-machine. When Peter tired of lying on his tummy on the dining-room floor, trying to draw things on a bit of slate or paper, he liked to turn his head and watch the cloth moving swiftly under the jigging needle, and the wheel turning so fast that it made an indistinct blur, and sang with a droning hum. He could see, too, a corner of his mother's bed with the patchwork quilt on it. The colors of the quilt were pleasantly subdued in their old age, and the calico star set in a square pleased Peter immensely. He thought it a most beautiful quilt. There was visible almost all of the bureau, an old-fashioned walnut affair with a small, dim, wavy glass, and drawers which you pulled out by sticking your fingers under the bunches of flowers that served as knobs. The fireplaces in both rooms were in a shocking state of disrepair, but one didn't mind that, as in winter a fire burned in them, and in summer they were boarded up with fireboards covered with cut-out pictures pasted on a background of black calico. Those gay cut-out pictures were a source of never-ending delight to Peter, who was intimately acquainted with every flower, bird, cat, puppy, and child of them. One little girl with a pink parasol and a purple dress, holding a posy in a lace-paper frill, he would have dearly loved to play with.