Before the coming of their baby girl, they had been little more than two patient, dumb beasts of burden. Born and bred to work--they worked--but dully--without hope or special object--but when God had sent into their lives that laughing, pretty thing, and formed her delicately that she might arouse their tenderness, they had changed. They looked at one another, and each, smiling, saw the other anew. They dreamed for her--they hoped now for her--they prayed now heavy, laborious, loving prayers for her. Truly she had been the “locust and wild honey” that fed them in their wilderness--so now it was for her they labored and were therefore never tired.
As the years passed I, who had long since ceased to live in S---- street, often went there to visit my friends who had remained, stopping with them from Saturday till Monday, and these visits kept me still in touch with “Little Knights” and his idol. It seemed strange that Rosie was quite unspoiled by so much adulation. She was a favorite with all the neighbors, was polite and obedient outside her own domain, while within it, an absolute monarch, she ruled with gentlest strength her idolatrous subjects. Derision or contempt shown to them was swiftly and sharply resented by her, while the only time she had to sternly exert her authority was when she made some demand upon the treasury that was for _their_ benefit instead of hers.
The Knights’ Sunday went like this: When it was time for Sunday-school the front door opened (mind you, in any other family of like position in life, that door would have opened for only one of three things--a wedding, a funeral, or the first visit of the clergyman, so think how they honored that mere child)--then big Mrs. Knights appeared and brushed the step over with a cloth and retired from view (a pause), then little Rosie appeared, balancing a moment on the step like one of her own pet, white doves, her many short skirts and her white dress starched to the uttermost limit of rattling stiffness, open-work white stockings and black slippers, with an ankle strap fastened with a gold button, a broad, pink sash about her waist, pink ribbon bows on each long, blond braid, a big leghorn hat secured first by an elastic band, and over that by broad, pink ribbons tied in a large bow under her milk-white chin. In her little, mitted hands she held a testament, and from between its leaves peeped a pink or a rose--a handkerchief the size of a large postage stamp finished her outfit--and so, gravely and with great propriety, she came down the narrow path between the “flox” and “sweet-william,” the “larkspur” and “four o’clocks,” and all the horde of strong-growing, free-blooming flowers of the poor--herself the daintiest flower of them all--and at the gate she turned and kissed her hand to the two heads thrust out at either side of the door--the fresh-shaven face of her father low down on one side, the broad-smiling face of her mother high up on the other--then walked sedately on towards the church, while behind her, the heads gone, the door closed, seemingly of its own volition--to open no more until the next week.