Real Folks

rs. Oferr's niece should be, down to her black kid gloves and broad-hemmed pocket-handkerchief, and little black straw travelling-basket (for mo

felt rather important, too, with her money independence-there being really "property" of hers to be spoken of as she had heard it of late. She had her mother's diamond ring on her third finger, and was comfortably conscious o

see that subduedly respectable and consciously private and superior man in the drab overcoat and the nice gloves and boots, who came forward and touched hi

ome, David?" a

am, thank you,

at; and when they reached Waverley Place and alighted, Mrs. Oferr had som

mething only a little less than "Michael with the sword." Laura had a susceptibility for dignities; s

her throat for a minute, as she thought of the old frocks and the old times already dropped so far behind; but Alice and Geraldine Oferr met her the next instant on the broad staircase at the back of the marble-paved h

ed so still, though the great, airy front-room was the place used now for their books and amusements as growing young ladies,-all leading one into another around the skylighted upper hall, into which the sunshine came streaked with amber and violet from the richly colored glass. She had a little side apartment given to her for h

brought them over from Ipsley, where they slept after their day's journey from Boston,-

rocky valley,-Swift River they called it. There are a great many Swift Rivers in New England. It was only a vehement little tributary of a larger stream, beside which lay larger towns; it was doing no work for the world, apparently, a

ining against the shade,-as they passed the head of a narrow, grassy lane, trod by cows' feet, and smelling of their milky breaths, and the sweetness of hay-barns,-as they came up, at length, over the long slope of turf that carpeted the way, as for a bride's feet, from the roadside to the ver

After the old shed-top in Bri

ank who had hearkened to whole forests in the stir of the one bri

Then it was folded, the first leaf turned down twice, lengthwise; then the two ends laid over, toward each other; then the last doubling, or rather trebling, across; and the open edge slipped over the fold

the sky up. It is like the specks we used to watch in the sunshine when it came in across the kitchen, and they danced up and down and through and away, and seemed to be live things; only we couldn't tell, you know, what they were, or if they really did know how g

the peak by the chimney. Harett is Mrs. Dillon's girl. Not the girl that lives with her,-her daughter. But the girls that live with people are daughters here. Somebody's else, I

e, and apple-pie in tin pails, for luncheon. Don't you remember the brown cupboard in Aunt Oldways' kitchen, h

I tell them about dancing-school, and the time we went to the theatre to see "Cinderella," and going shopping with mother, and our little tea-parties, and the Dutch dolls we made up in the long front chamber. O, don't you remember, Laura? What different pieces

ce boxes. Why don't they keep a little way off from each other in cities, and so have room for apple trees? I don't see why they need to crowd so. I hate to think of you all shut up tight when I am let right out into green grass, and blue sky, and apple orchards. That puts me in mind of something! Zebiah Jane, Aunt Oldways' gi

and you won't have anything left but the words. I am sure you don't sit out on the wood-shed at Aunt Oferr's, and I don't belie

she lives at the minister's. Where she used to live is only two miles from here, but othe

ectionat

ES SH

letter came

a new bonnet made for me. She did not like the plain black silk one. This is of gros d'Afrique, with little bands and cordings round the crown and front; and I have a dress of gros d'Afrique, too, trimmed with double folds piped on. For every-day I have a new black mousseline with white clover leaves on it, and an all-black French chally to wear to dinner. I don't wear my black and white calico at all. Next summer aunt means to have me wear white almost all

the other room, and how we used to make believe too in the slanting chimney glass? You could make believe it here with forty children. But I don't make believe much now. There is such a lot that is real, and it is all so grown up. It would seem so silly to have such plays, you know. I can't help thinking the things that come into my head though, and it seems sometimes just like a piece of a story, when I walk into the drawing-room all alone, just before company comes, with my gros d'Afrique on, and my puffed lace collar, and my hair tied back with long new bla

er, so that they hardly show at all. She says I shall soon wear long dresses, I am getting so tall. Alice wears them now, and her feet look so pretty, and she has such pretty slippers: little French purple ones, and sometimes dark green, and sometimes beautiful light gray

a letter, there are so many 'wears' in it. I have been r

ectionat

A SH

od sounding name. It doesn't seem at all commo

t going through all Frank and Laura's story. That with which we have especially to do lies on b

errs were at Saratoga. Mrs. Oferr was very much occupied now, of course, with introducing her own daughters. A ye

oncerts, and walking out and seeing the shops. But there was "no place to get out of it into." It didn't seem as if she ever reall

ow can you live witho

second arrival at Aunt Oldways'. She had done now even with the simplicity of wh

n, with little raised embroidered

at, up here?" asked Fra

ice with it. And see here,-I've a pink sunshade. They don't have them much yet, even in New York. Mr. Pemberton Oferr brought these home from Paris, for

s, he said, and in St. Petersburg, d

are your co

ecause they would bear squeezing. I've two French calicoes, with patte

ow; and open wrappers wer

pink silk with moss rosebuds and a little pink lace veil; the pink muslin, full-skirted over two starched

; why shouldn't I?" she sa

. "It would seem nicer to

ions grew stiller in years after. But this June Sunday, somewhere in the last thirties or the first forties, she went into the village church like an Aurora, and the village long remembered the respl

unt Oldways of Laura, when they c

asked Laura,

r' and stare," said

t she was by no means awestruck, evidently;

told, every fibre asserted itself. It was the live Aurora, bristling and tingling to its farthest electric point. She did not toss or flaunt, either; she had learned better of Signor Pirotti how to carr

ars later, with something more wonderful th

Laura was to be left with the Oldways. Grant Ledwith accompanied

white dress and her straw hat and her silly little bronze-and-blue-silk slippers printing the roadside gravel, leaning on Grant Ledwith's arm, seemed only to have gained a fresh, graceful adjunct to set off her own pre

uld have eight more before she was married; people wore ever so many skirts n

had been her bridesmaid; Gerry had a white brocade from Paris, and a point-lace veil. She had three dozen of everything, right through. They had gone to housekeep

ad her own little secret, for all that; something she neither told nor thought, yet which was there; and it cam

nd brocatelle in the drawing-room, a Sheffield-plate tea-service, and a crimson-and-giltedged dinner set that Mrs. Oferr gave them; twilled turkey-red curtains, that looked like thibet, in the best chamber; and the twenty-four white skirts and the silk dresses, and whatever corresponded to them on the bride-groom's part, in their wardrobes. All that was left of Laura's money, and all that was given them by Grant Ledwith's father, and Mr. Titus Oldways' as

o wait for two thousand dollar salarie

f fifty years, with no child of his own, kept the place for Oliver, and hung up his old-fashioned saddle-bags in the garret the very day the young man came home. He was there to be "called in," however, and with this backing, and the p

llowed, the prettiest girl in Homesworth, Frances Shiere, to come and begin the wo

in the brown-carpeted, white-shaded little corner room in the old "Rankin house;" a bigger place than they really wanted yet, and not all to be used at first; but rented "reasonable," central, sunshiny, and convenien

freckling cities, or between the imperceptible foldings of its hills,-only carrying way-passengers for the centuries,-went