at all, she would have met strange, lofty stares, and freezing
"thank you's," and "engagements."

"I've found the real folks, mother, and they're all coming!" she
cried, joyfully, running in where Mrs. Ripwinkley was setting little
vases and baskets about on shelf and table, between the white,
plain, muslin draperies of the long parlor windows. In vases and
baskets were sweet May flowers; bunches of deep-hued, rich-scented
violets, stars of blue and white periwinkle, and Miss Craydocke's
lilies of the valley in their tall, cool leaves; each kind gathered
by itself in clusters and handfuls. Inside the wide, open fireplace,
behind the high brass fender and the shining andirons, was a
"chimney flower pot," country fashion, of green lilac boughs,--not
blossoms,--and woodbine sprays, and crimson and white tulips. The
room was fair and fragrant, and the windows were wide open upon
vines and grass.

"It looks like you, mother, just as Mrs. Geoffrey's house looks like
her. Houses ought to look like people, I think."

"There's your surprise, children. We shouldn't be doing it right
without a surprise, you know."

And the surprise was not dolls' pelerines, but books. "Little Women"
was one, which sent Diana and Hazel off for a delicious two hours'
read up in their own room until dinner.

After dinner, Miss Craydocke came, in her purple and white striped
mohair and her white lace neckerchief; and at three o'clock Uncle
Titus walked in, with his coat pockets so bulgy and rustling and
odorous of peppermint and sassafras, that it was no use to pretend
to wait and be unconscious, but a pure mercy to unload him so that
he might be able to sit down.

Nobody knows to this day where he got them; he must have ordered
them somewhere, one would think, long enough before to have special
moulds and implements made; but there were large, beautiful
cockles,--not of the old flour-paste sort, but of clear, sparkling
sugar, rose-color, and amber, and white, with little slips of tinted
paper tucked within, and these printed delicately with pretty rhymes
and couplets, from real poets; things to be truly treasured, yet
simple, for children's apprehension, and fancy, and fun. And there
were "Salem gibraltars," such as we only get out of Essex County now
and then, for a big charitable Fair, when Salem and everywhere else
gets its spirit up to send its best and most especial; and there
were toys and devices in sugar--flowers and animals, hats, bo