a great flat stone in
an angle, where was also entrance into the hall by the house-door,
at the right hand. The door of the office stood open, and across the
stone one could look down, between a range of lilac bushes and the
parlor windows, through a green door-yard into the street.

"Now, Mother Frank, tell us about the party!"

They called her "Mother Frank" when they wished to be particularly
coaxing. They had taken up their father's name for her, with their
own prefix, when they were very little ones, before he went away and
left nobody to call her Frank, every day, any more.

"That same little old story? Won't you ever be tired of it,--you
great girls?" asked the mother; for she had told it to them ever
since they were six and eight years old.

"Yes! No, never!" said the children.

For how _should_ they outgrow it? It was a sunny little bit out of
their mother's own child-life. We shall go back to smaller things,
one day, maybe, and find them yet more beautiful. It is the _going_
back, together.

"The same old way?"

"Yes; the very same old way."

"We had little open-work straw hats and muslin pelisses,--your Aunt
Laura and I,"--began Mrs. Ripwinkley, as she had begun all those
scores of times before. "Mother put them on for us,--she dressed us
just alike, always,--and told us to take each other's hands, and go
up Brier and down Hickory streets, and stop at all the houses that
she named, and that we knew; and we were to give her love and
compliments, and ask the mothers in each house,--Mrs. Dayton, and
Mrs. Holridge (she lived up the long steps), and Mrs. Waldow, and
the rest of them, to let Caroline and Grace and Fanny and Susan, and
the rest of _them_, come at four o'clock, to spend the afternoon and
take tea, if it was convenient."

"O, mother!" said Hazel, "you didn't say that when you _asked_
people, you know."

"O, no!" said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "That was when we went to stop a
little while ourselves, without being asked. Well, it was to please
to let them come. And all the ladies were at home, because it was
only ten o'clock; and they all sent their love and compliments, and
they were much obliged, and the little girls would be very happy.

"It was a warm June day; up Brier Street was a steep walk; down
Hickory we were glad to keep on the shady side, and thought it was
nice that Mrs. Bemys and Mrs. Waldow lived there. The strings of our
hats were very moist and clinging when we got home, and Laur