ough I'll admit, just being a plain human mortal,
I don't know yet quite _what_ the Leavitt traditions are, but believe
me, I expect to, very soon, for Aunt Sabrina talks of nothing else!

"Of course, sweet child, you can't make head or tail to all my
jibberish, so I'll write lucid English now. The Island is wonderfully
beautiful, everything about it seems different from any other part of
the world--the trees are bigger and the grass is greener and every now
and then you catch a glimpse of Lake Champlain as blue as Anne's
sapphire ring and hazy purple mountains beyond. And the whole place is
brimming with all kinds of historical stories.

"They call this house Happy House. It was named that by the first Anne
Leavitt, and she had a mantel made in England with the letters carved
on it, and the day after it was put up she died in the very room I'm
writing in! Isn't that tragic and exciting? I can't make a story out
of that, though, for it's been all written up in a book they sell at
North Hero.

"The house is big and built of stone that was quarried on the Island,
and it's all covered with vines and is beautiful--outside. It has
trees all around it that meet overhead like a canopy, and instead of a
regular garden in beds the ground's all covered with tiger lilies and
Sweet William and phlox and lots of flowers I don't know the name of,
that look as though they'd spilled out over their gardens and grew
everywhere. And there's a darling old gardener who is a descendant of
Ethan Allen.

"In fact, everyone I've seen is old and, Webb said, is descended from
'somebody or other.'

"But the inside of the house--oh, horrors! I don't believe a ray of
sunshine has gotten into it since the year one, and if it did, it would
be shut out mighty fast. Dad would go wild with delight over the old
furniture, and the dishes are beautiful, but the wallpaper looks like
green lobsters crawling all around, and you walk on brown-red roses as
big as cabbages. Does it torture my artistic soul? Oh, ye gods! And
my own room! No wonder that other Anne Leavitt died! I never saw so
many tidies in my life--I shall never draw a happy breath among them.
Oh, I can shut my eyes, right now and see the dear old tower room--you
sitting in the middle of the bed (unmade, of course), playing your uke,
Anne digging at her French Four on the window seat along with the fudge
dishes which I forgot to wash, and a week's muss all around us. Oh,
Clair