ay that we saw grandpa ride away to
the mines, but we missed seeing Jakie steal off, with his bunch of
cows. He felt too badly to say good-bye to us.

I was almost heart-broken when I learned that he was not coming back.
He had been my comforter in most of my troubles, had taught me to ride
and drive the horse, shown me the wood duck's nest in the hollow of
our white oak tree, and the orioles' pretty home swinging from a twig
in the live oak, also where the big white-faced owls lived. He had
helped me to gather wild flowers, made me whistles from branches cut
from the pussy willows, and had yodeled for me as joyfully as for loved
ones in his Alpine home. Everything that he had said and done meant a
great deal more to me now, and kept him in mind, as I went about alone,
or with grandma, doing the things that had been his to do. She now
moulded her cheeses in smaller forms, and we had fewer cows to milk.

When the season for collecting and drying herbs came, Georgia and I had
opportunity to be together considerably. It was after we had picked the
first drying of sage and were pricking our fingers on the saffron pods,
that grandma, in passing, with her apron full of Castilian rose petals,
stopped and announced that if we would promise to work well, and gather
the sage leaves and saffron tufts as often as necessary, she would let
us go to a "real school" which was about to open in town.

Oh, dear! to go to school, to have books and slate and pencil! What
more could be wished? Yes, we would get up earlier, work faster before
time to go, and hurry home after lessons were over. And I would carry
the book Aunt Lucy had given me. It was all arranged, and grandma went
to town to buy slates, pencils, speller, and a stick of wine-colored
ribbon to tie up our hair.

When the anticipated hour came, there were great preparations that we
might be neat and clean and ready on time. Our hair was parted in four
equal divisions; the front braids, tied with ribbon, formed a U at the
back of the neck; and we wore new calico dresses and sun-bonnets, and
carried lunch for two in a curious little basket, which grandma must
have brought with her from Switzerland. Joyfully we started forth to
the first American school opened in Sonoma.

Alas! it was not what our anticipations had pictured. The schoolroom
was a dreary adobe, containing two rows of benches so high that, when
seated, we could barely touch the earthen floor with our toes. The
sch