Oh, what fun we had that afternoon!  What a big rent she tore in my gingham frock, and what a “dear, delightful old haunted castle of a thing” she pronounced our house to be.  Darling, darling Nellie!  I shut my eyes and she comes before me again, the same bright beautiful creature she was when I saw her first, as she was when I saw her for the last, last time.

It rained until dark, and Nellie, who confidently expected to stay all night, had whispered to me her intention of “tying our toes together,” when there came a tremendous rap upon the door, and without waiting to be bidden in walked Mr. Gilbert, puffing and swelling, and making himself perfectly at home, in a kind of offhand manner, which had in it so much of condescension that I was disgusted, and when sure Nellie would not see me I made at him a wry face, thereby feeling greatly relieved!

After managing to let mother know how expensive his family was, how much he paid yearly for wines and cigars, and how much Adaline’s education and piano had cost, he arose to go, saying to his daughter, “Come, puss, take off those—­ahem—­those habiliments, and let’s be off!”

Nellie obeyed, and just before she was ready to start she asked, when I would come and spend the day with her.

I looked at mother, mother looked at Mr. Gilbert, Mr. Gilbert looked at me, and after surveying me from head to foot said, spitting between every other word, “Ye-es ye-es, we’ve come to live in the country, and I suppose” (here he spit three successive times), “and I suppose we may as well be on friendly terms as any other; so, madam” (turning to mother), “I am willing to have your little daughter visit us ocasionally.”  Then adding that “he would extend the same invitation to her were it not that his wife was an invalid and saw no company,” he departed.

One morning, several days afterward, a servant brought to our house a neat little note from Mrs. Gilbert, asking mother to let me spend the day with Nellie.  After some consultation between mother and grandma, it was decided that I might go, and in less than an hour I was dressed and on the road, my hair braided so tightly in my neck that the little red bumps of flesh set up here and there, like currants on a brown earthen platter.

Nellie did not wait to receive me formally, but came running down the road, telling me that Robin had made a swing in the barn, and that we would play there most all day, as her mother was sick, and Adaline, who occupied two-thirds of the house, wouldn’t let us come near her.  This Adaline was to me a very formidable personage.  Hitherto I had only caught glimpses of her, as with long skirts and waving plumes she sometimes dashed past our house on horseback, and it was with great trepidation that I now followed Nellie into the parlor, where she told me her sister was.

“Adaline, this is my little friend,” said she; and Adaline replied: 

“How do you do, little friend?”