They were watching the decorators at work inside the drawing-room, hanging the gate of roses in the arch.

The youngest one was perched on a barrel that had been dragged up for that purpose, so that his older brothers and sisters might be spared the weariness of holding him up to see.

A narrow board laid across the top made an uneasy and precarious perch for him.

He was seated astride, with his bare black legs dangling down inside the barrel.
"You M'haley Gibbs," called the woman, "don't you let Ca'line Allison lean agin that bo'd.

It'll upset Sweety into the bar'l." Her warning came too late, for even as she called the slight board was pushed off its foundations by the weight of the roly-poly Ca'line Allison, and the pickaninny went down into the barrel as suddenly as a candle is snuffed out by the wind.
"You M'haley, I'll natcherly lay you out," shrieked the woman, hurrying up the path to the rescue.