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 Sidney loved and knew by heart . Sidney dropped her pointed chin in her hands and looked dreamily out into the moonlit night , while she thought her letter out a little more fully before beginning to write . Her big brown eyes were full of wistfulness and romance ; for Sidney was romantic , albeit a faithful and understanding acquaintance with her father 's books had given to her romance refinement and reason , and the delicacy of her own nature had imparted to it a self-respecting bias . Presently she began to write , with a flush of real excitement on her face . In the middle of things the baby choked on a small twist spool and Sidney had to catch him up by the heels and hold him head downward until the trouble was ejected .
Then she had XXXXX soothe him , and finally write the rest of her letter holding him on one arm and protecting the epistle from the grabs of his sticky little fingers .
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