Laura Shiere did not think much about the "stump," when, in her dark
gray merino travelling dress, and her black ribbons, nicely
appointed, as Mrs. Oferr's niece should be, down to her black kid
gloves and broad-hemmed pocket-handkerchief, and little black straw
travelling-basket (for morocco bags were not yet in those days), she
stepped into the train with her aunt at the Providence Station, on
her way to Stonington and New York.
The world seemed easily laid out before her. She was like a cousin
in a story-book, going to arrive presently at a new home, and begin
a new life, in which she would be very interesting to herself and to
those about her. She 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 of it when she drew
off her left-hand glove. Laura Shiere's nature had only been
stirred, as yet, a very little below the surface, and the surface
rippled pleasantly in the sunlight that was breaking forth from the
brief clouds.
Among the disreputable and vociferous crowd of New York hack
drivers, that swarmed upon the pier as the _Massachusetts_ glided
into her dock, it was good to 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 his hat to Mrs.
Oferr, took her shawl and basket, and led the way, among the
aggravated public menials, to a handsome private carriage waiting on
the street.
"All well at home, David?" asked Mrs. Oferr.
"All well, ma'am, thank you," replied David.
And another man sat upon the box, in another drab coat, and touched
_his_ hat; and when they reached Waverley Place and alighted, Mrs.
Oferr had something to say to him of certain directions, and
addressed him as "Moses."
It was very grand and wonderful to order "David" and "Moses" about.
Laura felt as if her aunt were something only a little less than
"Michael with the sword." Laura had a susceptibility for dignities;
she appreciated, as we have seen out upon the wood-shed, "high
places, and all the people looking up."
David and Moses were brothers, she found out; she supposed that was
the reason they dressed alike, in drab coats; as she and Frank used
to wear their red merinos, and their blue ginghams. A little spasm
did come up in 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 hall, looking slight and delicate,
and princess-like, in the grand space built about them for their
lives to move in; and in the distance and magnificence of it all,
the faint little momentary image of Frank faded away.
She went up with them out of the great square hall, over the stately
staircase, past the open doors of drawing-rooms and library,
stretching back in a long suite, with the conservatory gleaming
green from the far end over the garden, up the second stairway to
the floor where their rooms were; bedrooms and nursery,--this last
called 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 her own, with a recessed window, in which were blossoming
plants just set there from the conservatory; opposite stood a white,
low bed in a curtained alcove, and beyond was a dressing-closet.
Laura thought she should not be able to sleep there at all for a
night or two, for the beauty of it and the good time she should be
having.
At that same moment Frank and her Aunt Oldways were getting down
from the stage that had brought them over from Ipsley, where they
slept after their day's journey from Boston,--at the doorstone of
the low, broad-roofed, wide-built, roomy old farm-house in
Homesworth.
Right in the edge of the town it stood, its fields stretching over
the south slope of green hills in sunny uplands, and down in meadowy
richness to the wild, hidden, sequestered river-side, where the
brown water ran through a narrow, 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, at present; there were no mills, except a little
grist-mill to which the farmers brought their corn, cuddled among
the rocks and wild birches and alders, at a turn where the road came
down, and half a dozen planks made a bit of a bridge.
"O, what beautiful places!" cried Frank, as they crossed the little
bridge, and glanced either way into a green, gray, silvery vista of
shrubs and rocks, and rushing water, with the white spires of
meadow-sweet and the pink hardback, and the first bright plumes of
the golden rod nodding and shining 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 very
threshold. She looked along the low, treble-piled garden wall, too,
and out to the open sheds, deep with pine chips; and upon the broad
brown house-roof, with its long, gradual decline, till its eaves
were within reach of a child's fingers from the ground; and her
quick eye took in facilities.
"O, if Laura could see this! After the old shed-top in Brier Street,
and the one tree!"
But Laura had got what the shed-top stood for with her; it was
Frank who had hearkened to whole forests in the stir of the one
brick-rooted fir. To that which each child had, it was already
given.
In a week or two Frank wrote Laura a letter. It was an old-fashioned
letter, you know; a big sheet, written close, four pages,
all but the middle of the last page, which was left for the
"superscription." 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 folds. A wafer sealed it, and a thimble
pressed it,--and there were twenty-five cents postage to pay. That
was a letter in the old times, when Laura and Frank Shiere were
little girls. And this was that letter:--
DEAR LAURA,--We got here safe, Aunt Oldways and I, a week ago
last Saturday, and it is _beautiful_. There is a green
lane,--almost everybody has a green lane,--and the cows go up
and down, and the swallows build in the barn-eaves. They fly
out at sundown, and fill all 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 good it was. But
these are big and real, and you can see their wings, and you
know what they mean by it. I guess it is all the same thing,
only some things are little and some are big. You can see the
stars here, too,--such a sky full. And that is all the same
again.
There are beautiful roofs and walls here. I guess you would
think you were high up! Harett and I go up from under the
cheese-room windows right over the whole house, and we sit on
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 mean.
They are all alike. I suppose her name is Harriet, but they all
call her Harett. I don't like to ask her for fear she should
think I thought they didn't know how to pronounce.
I go to school with Harett; up to the West District. We carry
brown bread and butter, and doughnuts, and cheese, and
apple-pie in tin pails, for luncheon. Don't you remember the
brown cupboard in Aunt Oldways' kitchen, how sagey, and
doughnutty, and good it always smelt? It smells just so now,
and everything tastes just the same.
There is a great rock under an oak tree half way up to school,
by the side of the road. We always stop there to rest, coming
home. Three of the girls come the same way as far as that, and
we always save some of our dinner to eat up there, and we tell
stories. 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 we have got into our remembrances
already! I feel as if I was making patchwork. Some-time,
may-be, I shall tell somebody about living _here_. Well, they
will be beautiful stories! Homesworth is an elegant place to
live in. You will see when you come next summer.
There is an apple tree down in the south orchard that bends
just like a horse's back. Then the branches come up over your
head and shade you. We ride there, and we sit and eat summer
apples there. Little rosy apples with dark streaks in them all
warm with the sun. You can't think what a smell they have, just
like pinks and spice 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' girl, always washes
her face in the morning at the pump-basin out in the back
dooryard, just like the ducks. She says she can't spatter round
in a room; she wants all creation for a slop-bowl. I feel as if
we had all creation for everything up here. But I can't put all
creation in a letter if I try. _That_ would spatter dreadfully.
I expect a long letter from you every day now. But I don't see
what you will make it out of. I think I have got all the
_things_ 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 believe you pound stones and bricks, and make colors. Do
you know when we rubbed our new shoes with pounded stone and
made them gray?
I never told you about Luclarion. She came up as soon as the
things were all sent off, and she lives at the minister's.
Where she used to live is only two miles from here, but other
people live there now, and it is built on to and painted straw
color, with a green door.
Your affectionate sister,
FRANCES SHIERE.