Part 4 (2/2)
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 gra.s.s, 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 s.h.i.+ERE.
When Laura's letter came this was it:--
DEAR FRANK,--I received your kind letter a week ago, but we have been very busy having a dressmaker and doing all our fall shopping, and I have not had time to answer it before. We shall begin to go to school next week, for the vacations are over, and then I shall have ever so much studying to do. I am to take lessons on the piano, too, and shall have to practice two hours a day. In the winter we shall have dancing-school and practicing parties. Aunt has had 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 time, with lavender and violet ribbons. I shall have a white muslin with three skirts and a black sash to wear to parties and to Public Sat.u.r.days, next winter. They have Public Sat.u.r.days at dancing-school every three weeks. But only the parents and relations can come. Alice and Geraldine dance the shawl-dance with Helena Pomeroy, with crimson and white Canton c.r.a.pe scarfs. They have showed me some of it at home.
Aunt Oferr says I shall learn the _gavotte_.
Aunt Oferr's house is splendid. The drawing-room is full of sofas, and divans, and ottomans, and a _causeuse_, a little S-shaped seat for two people. Everything is covered with blue velvet, and there are blue silk curtains to the windows, and great looking-gla.s.ses between, that you can see all down into through rooms and rooms, as if there were a hundred of them. Do you remember the story Luclarion used to tell us of when she and her brother Mark were little children and used to play that the looking-gla.s.s-things 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 gla.s.s? 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 s.h.i.+ERE.
P.S. Aunt Oferr says Laura s.h.i.+ere 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.
The winter before, Frank had been a few weeks in New York. But it tired her dreadfully, she said. She liked the theatres and the concerts, 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 really got home and took off her things. She told Laura it was like that first old letter of hers; it was just ”wearing,” all the time.
Laura laughed. ”But how can you live _without_ wearing?” said she.
Frank stood by, wondering, while Laura unpacked her trunks that morning after her second arrival at Aunt Oldways'. She had done now even with the simplicity of white and violet, and her wardrobe blossomed out like the flush of a summer garden.
She unfolded a rose-colored muslin, with little raised embroidered spots, and threw it over the bed.
”Where _will_ you wear that, up here?” asked Frank, in pure bewilderment.
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