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