Sidney sighed and went downstairs for the baby . It never would have occurred to her to protest or be petulant about it . She had all her aunt 's sweetness of disposition , if she resembled her in nothing else . She had not grumbled because she had to rise at four that morning , get breakfast , milk the cows , bake bread , prepare seven children for school , get dinner , preserve twenty quarts of strawberries , get tea , and milk the cows again . All her days were alike as far as hard work and dullness went , but she accepted them cheerfully and uncomplainingly . But she did resent having to look after the baby when she wanted to write her letter . She carried the baby to her room , spread a quilt on the floor for him to sit on , and gave him a box of empty spools to play with . Fortunately he was a phlegmatic infant , fond of staying in one place , and not given to roaming about in search of adventures ; but Sidney knew she would have to keep an eye on him , and it would be distracting to literary effort . She got out her box of paper and sat down by the little table at the window with a small kerosene lamp at her elbow . The room was small -- a mere box above the kitchen which Sidney shared with two small cousins . Her bed and the cot where the little girls slept filled up almost all the available space . The furniture was poor , but everything was neat -- it was the only neat room in the house , indeed , for tidiness was no besetting virtue of Aunt Jane 's . Opposite Sidney was a small muslined and befrilled toilet-table , above which hung an eight-by-six-inch mirror , in which Sidney saw herself reflected as she devoutly hoped other people did not see her . Just at that particular angle one eye appeared to be as large as an orange , while the other was the size of a pea , and the mouth zigzagged from ear to ear . Sidney hated that mirror as virulently as she could hate anything . It seemed to her to typify all that was unlovely in her life . The mirror of existence into which her fresh young soul had looked for twenty years gave back to her wistful gaze just such distortions of fair hopes and ideals . Half of the little table by which she sat was piled high with books -- old books , evidently well read and well-bred books , classics of fiction and verse every one of them , and all bearing on the flyleaf the name of Sidney Richmond , thereby meaning not the girl at the table , but her college-bred young father who had died the day before she was born . Her mother had died the day after , and Sidney thereupon had come into the hands of good Aunt Jane , with those books for her dowry , since nothing else was left after the expenses of the double funeral had been paid . One of the books had Sidney Richmond 's name printed on the title-page instead of written on the flyleaf .
It was a thick little volume of poems , published in his college days -- musical , unsubstantial , pretty little poems , every one of which the girl XXXXX loved and knew by heart .
Richmond Sidney cot days left morning pea quilt spools years