. Recollections of Auton House .. . est. I must premise this description by making aremark about the nursery night-dress of thatperiod. All the girls wore nightcaps with ruf-fles on the edge. As to that matter MotherAuton and Debrah were all in the fashion ;mothers cap was high behind, the ruffles com-ing all over her face and concealing every feat-ure but her nose, while Debrahs was smaller,and used to get askew in the morning, afterthe whole family had clambered across her faceto see who could be first at the fire to dress. All the boy Autons wore night-drawers, tiedbehind with running strin
. Recollections of Auton House .. . est. I must premise this description by making aremark about the nursery night-dress of thatperiod. All the girls wore nightcaps with ruf-fles on the edge. As to that matter MotherAuton and Debrah were all in the fashion ;mothers cap was high behind, the ruffles com-ing all over her face and concealing every feat-ure but her nose, while Debrahs was smaller,and used to get askew in the morning, afterthe whole family had clambered across her faceto see who could be first at the fire to dress. All the boy Autons wore night-drawers, tiedbehind with running strings, once at the neck,and then again at the waist. These garmentsalways gaped a little in the back, but thisonly made it more fun to jump out of themafter they had been tied, and then stick our legs quickly back againbefore Debrah saw us. Every Auton child said his prayers. First came the prayer beginning Now another day is this petition there are lines like these: See how my childhoodruns to waste; My sins how great a sum !. AUTON NURSERY. 29 This passage puzzled us much, and we used to inspect each othervery closely to see if we were actually running to waist. Weconcluded, also, that as the prayer said that our sins were a greatersum they probably must be, although we failed to see the force ofthe expression. One of the children explained it by saying it had something to do with salvation, and that settled it. After thiscame the prayer, Now I lay me, etc. To us, this was some sort of an animal, a Llama, which we resem-bled, lying down to sleep. Religion seemed queer to us then, andcame hard. After our devotions we prepared ourselves for the nightand generally consumed large quantities of cold, shortened, flourJohnny-cake, which made us very thirsty, and got the bed full ofdried crumbs. These would roll under us and prick our warm rosyskins, so that Debrah had to come and scrape them up in the palmof her hand, while we squatted on the outside of the bed in ournight-clot
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