s 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.

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 Saturdays, next winter. They have
Public Saturdays 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 crape 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-glasses 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-glass-things were real, and that two children lived
in them, in the other room, and how we used to make believe too