Real Folks

ong, red, sloping kitchen roof under the arches of the willow-tree, hemming towels for their afternoon "stent." Th

f with the tar smell and the gravel stones and the one tree,-who might run free in the wide woods and up the breezy h

ould see across the corner into my best fri

ve that party

I like things set in rows, and people having places, like the desks at school. Why, you've got to go

ld little nests about anywhere in the cunning, separate pla

irds, it's people! What

ests are better t

to tell us that story.

e, and Mrs. Ripwinkley sat there with her work on summer afternoons. The door opened out, close at the front, upon a great flat stone in an angle, where was also entrance into the hall by the house-

ank, tell us ab

taken up their father's name for her, with their own prefix, when they were very li

it,-you great girls?" asked the mother; for she had told

ver!" said t

mother's own child-life. We shall go back to smaller things, one day, m

ame ol

very sam

o take each other's hands, and go up Brier and down Hickory streets, and stop at all the houses that she named, and that we knew; and we were to give her love and compliments, and ask the mothers in each house,-Mrs. Dayton, and Mrs

you didn't say that when y

ell, it was to please to let them come. And all the ladies were at home, because it was only ten o'clock; and

side, and thought it was nice that Mrs. Bemys and Mrs. Waldow lived there. The strings of our hats were

d our pelisses,-the tight little sleeves came off wrong side out,-sponged our faces with cool water, and brushed out Laura's curls. That was the only di

ng. We were used to these little plays of mother's, and she couldn't really surprise us with her kindnesses. We went and sat down in the window-seat, and opened them as deliberately and in as grown-u

nd then we sniffed, and looked at each other, and at mother, and laughed. After dinner we had on our white French calicoes with blue sprigs, and mother said she should take a little nap, and

indeed. Lucy Waldow wore a pink lawn, and Grace Holridge a buff French print. Susan Bemys said her little sister

the 'lady fairs,' one after another, into our ring, and were dancing and sing

as no danger of any mischief, or that we shouldn't behave well, but she only wanted to see the good time. That day she had on a white muslin dress with little purple flowers on it, and a bow of purple ribbon right in the side of her hair. She had a little piece of fine work in her hand, and after she had spoken to all the little gi

the middle of 'So says the Grand Mufti,' and Grace Holridge was the Grand Mufti. Hannah went up to her first, as she stood there alone, and Grace took a saucer and held it up before the row of us, and said, 'Thus says the Grand Mufti!' and then she b

came, and we went down into the basement room. It wasn't tea, though; it was milk in little clear, pink mugs, some that mother only had out for our parties, and

ped us, and Hannah passed things round. Susan Bemys took cake three times, and Luc

en he came up into the parlor and watched us dancing. Mr. Dayton came in, too. At about half past eight some of the other fathers called, and some of the mothers sent their girls, and everybody was fetched away. It was nine o'clock when Laura and I went to bed, and we couldn't go to sleep until after the clock str

post-office. "You'll talk them children off to Boston, finally, Mrs. Ripwinkley! Nothing ever tugs so at one end, but there's something tugging at

a letter from them that was posted in Boston, now. They had been living at a place out of town for several years. Mrs. Ledwith kne

Ripwinkley, after all t

iled. "It didn't take a Solomon,"

t, it's the drift of things. Those girls have got Boston in their minds as hard and

this; they had got their story, and gone ba

ey, as she drew out and unfolded the lett

marked Luclarion, and we

e (at least I thought I had), and so, I believe, have they. But I have a wish now to get you and your sister to come and live nearer to me, that we may

t an object to you in some way. You can do some things for your children here that you could not do in Homesworth. I will give you two thousand dollars a year to live on, and secure the same to you if I die. I have a house here in Aspen Street, not far from where I live myself, which I will give to either of you that it may suit. That you can settle between you when you come. It is rath

in, you

S OLD

winkley, with excitement, "

p in," she said again, when Lucla

lded it and

you can ask Him in four minutes. You and I can talk afterwards."

away for rising. Mrs. Ripwinkley was apt to come out and talk things over at this time of the kneading. She could get more from Luclarion then than at any other opportunity. Perhaps that was because Miss Grapp could

" said Mrs. Ripwinkley, at last. "And jus

as for what it will be for the children,-why, that's acc

but her views of life were precisely the