The madwomen round her appeared to consider her assumption of royalty as a very good joke, for the homage they rendered her was quizzical in the extreme.
There are times when these people seem to have a vague consciousness of their situation; when gleams of sense break in upon them, and whisper the awful truth to their minds. Such moments must form the drops of bitterness in the poisoned cup of life, which a mysterious Providence has presented to their lips. While I was looking sadly from face to face, as these benighted creatures flitted round me, a tall stout woman exclaimed in a loud voice--
"That's Mrs. M---, of Belleville! God bless her! Many a good quarter dollar I've got from her;" and, running up to me, she flung her arms about my neck, and kissed me most vehemently.
I did not at first recognise her; and, though I submitted with a good grace to the mad hug she gave me, I am afraid that I trembled not a little in her grasp. She was the wife of a cooper, who lived opposite to us during the first two years we resided in Belleville; and I used to buy from her all the milk I needed for the children.
She was always a strange eccentric creature when sane--if, indeed, she ever had enjoyed the right use of her senses; and, in spite of the joy she manifested at the unexpected sight of me, I remember her once threatening to break my head with an old hoop, when I endeavoured to save her little girl from a frightful flagellation from the same instrument.
I had stepped across the street to her husband's workshop, to order a new meat barrel. I found him putting a barrel together, assisted by a fine little girl of ten years of age, who embraced the staves with her thin supple arms, while the father slipped one of the hoops over them in order to secure them in their place. It was a pretty picture; the smiling rosy face of the girl looking down upon her father, as he stooped over the barrel adjusting the hoop, his white curling hair falling over her slender arms. Just then the door was flung open, and Mrs. --- rushed in like a fury.
"Katrine, where are you?"
"Here, mother," said the child, very quietly.
How dar'd you to leave the cradle widout my lave?"
"Father called me," and the child turned pale, and began to tremble. "I came for a moment to help him."