"Your name is Rhoda," grandmother said, with the catechism open in her hand. "Rhoda. Rhoda. It's quite easy to say."
"Ain't I the little pig that went to market?" I asked, anxiously, gazing up from her lap into her eyes, over which she wore glass things like covers. "And ain't I Baby Bunting?" I continued, with the memory of a famous hunt stealing over me.
"Once you were," grandmother answered, soberly. "Now you are Rhoda."
I liked to sit in grandmother's lap. She had such a soft silk lap, and in her pocket-hole there was a box which held peppermint drops. She never gave them to anybody but just me, when I was good, and if her arms were thin and fragile under the soft silk, she knew how to hold a little girl in a most comfortable fashion. Her white hair rippled down low at the sides, concealing her ears, but her ears were there for I had run my fingers up to see. She wore a lovely lace collar, and a breastpin with a picture on it, and when she walked the charms on her watch-chain clinked in a musical way. Grandmother was beautiful, and every one said that I looked just like grandmother. That was very nice, but puzzling, for my hair was golden, and my eyes were uncovered, and where grandmother had her wrinkles I had only a soft pink cheek.
I never sat very long on grandmother's lap. It was a function that meant catechism or extreme repentance, and then, also, I was too popular for one person to have me always. The family handed me around very much like refreshments. Now I would be with mother, and now with father, and now with Auntie May, who did not live at our house, but would run in on her way to school to pat my head. They were all so fond of me that it was quite gratifying.
"Where is Rhoda?" father would ask the very first thing when he came into the house at night, and I would sit up for him, holding on tightly to my chair for fear that they would put me to bed before he came.
Then we would have a little talk together, up in a corner by ourselves. He was my confidant, and was more on a level with me than other people. I had an idea that he would give me anything, quite irrespective of goodness or badness, for when I was naughty he never appeared to think any the worse of me, although the rest of the family might be bowed down with the sense of my moral shortcomings. He was my champion, and in the early twilight I had many stories to tell him, not always of the strictest veracity.
"And so I runned away, far, far away, and I only came home just now," I invented, in an airy manner.
"Did you see any one on the road?" he asked, with sudden interest.