way for rising. Mrs. Ripwinkley was apt to
come out and talk things over at this time of the kneading. She
could get more from Luclarion then than at any other opportunity.
Perhaps that was because Miss Grapp could not walk off from the
bread-trough; or it might be that there was some sympathy between
the mixing of her flour and yeast into a sweet and lively
perfection, and the bringing of her mental leaven wholesomely to
bear.

"It looks as if it were meant, Luclarion," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, at
last. "And just think what it will be for the children."

"I guess it's meant fast enough," replied Luclarion. "But as for
what it will be for the children,--why, that's according to what you
all make of it. And that's the stump."

Luclarion Grapp was fifty-four years old; but her views of life were
precisely the same that they had been at twenty-eight.

VI.

AND.

There is a piece of Z----, just over the river, that they call
"And."

It began among the school-girls; Barbara Holabird had christened it,
with the shrewdness and mischief of fourteen years old. She said the
"and-so-forths" lived there.

It was a little supplementary neighborhood; an after-growth, coming
up with the railroad improvements, when they got a freight station
established on that side for the East Z---- mills. "After Z----,
what should it be but 'And?'" Barbara Holabird wanted to know. The
people who lived there called it East Square; but what difference
did that make?

It was two miles Boston-ward from Z---- centre, where the down
trains stopped first; that was five minutes gained in the time
between it and the city. Land was cheap at first, and sure to come
up in value; so there were some streets laid out at right angles,
and a lot of houses put up after a pattern, as if they had all been
turned out of blanc-mange moulds, and there was "East Square." Then
people began by-and-by to build for themselves, and a little variety
and a good deal of ambition came in. They had got to French roofs
now; this was just before the day of the multitudinous little paper
collar-boxes with beveled covers, that are set down everywhere now,
and look as if they could be lifted up by the chimneys, any time,
and be carried off with a thumb and finger. Two and a half story
houses, Mansarded, looked grand; and the East Square people thought
nothing slight of themselves, though the "old places" and the real
Z---- families were all over on West Hill.

Mrs. M