were real, and that two children lived in them, in 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 black ribbons.  It all goes through my head just how I look coming in, and how grand it is, and what the words would be in a book about it, and I seem to act a little bit, just to myself as if I were a girl in a story, and it seems to say, “And Laura walked up the long drawing-room and took a book bound in crimson morocco from the white marble pier table and sat down upon the velvet ottoman in the balcony window.”  But what happened then it never tells.  I suppose it will by and by.  I am getting used to it all, though; it isn’t so awfully splendid as it was at first.

I forgot to tell you that my new bonnet flares a great deal, and that I have white lace quilling round the face with little black dotty things in it on stems.  They don’t wear those close cottage bonnets now.  And aunt has had my dresses made longer and my pantalettes shorter, 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, to go with different dresses.  I don’t care for anything but the slippers, but I should like such ones as hers.  Aunt says I can’t, of course, as long as I wear black, but I can have purple ones next summer to wear with my white dresses.  That will be when I come to see you.

I am afraid you will think this is a very wearing kind of a
letter, there are so many ‘wears’ in it.  I have been reading it
over so far, but I can’t put in any other word.

                  Your affectionate sister,
                                   LAURA SHIERE.

P.S.  Aunt Oferr says Laura Shiere is such a good sounding name. 
It doesn’t seem at all common.  I am glad of it.  I should hate
to be common.

I do not think I shall give you any more of it just here than these two letters tell.  We are not going through all Frank and Laura’s story.  That with which we have especially to do lies on beyond.  But it takes its roots in this, as all stories take their roots far back and underneath.

Two years after, Laura was in Homesworth for her second summer visit at the farm.  It was convenient, while the Oferrs were at Saratoga.  Mrs. Oferr was very much occupied now, of course, with introducing her own daughters.  A year or two later, she meant to give Laura a season at the Springs.  “All in turn, my dear, and good time,” she said.