E-text prepared by Janet Kegg
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
REAL FOLKS
BY
MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY
1893
CONTENTS
III. BY STORY-RAIL: TWENTY-SIX YEARS AN HOUR
V. HOW THE NEWS CAME TO HOMESWORTH
VIII. EAVESDROPPING IN ASPEN STREET
I.
THIS WAY, AND THAT.
The parlor blinds were shut, and all the windows of the third-storyrooms were shaded; but the pantry window, looking out on a long lowshed, such as city houses have to keep their wood in and to drytheir clothes upon, was open; and out at this window had come twolittle girls, with quiet steps and hushed voices, and carried theirbooks and crickets to the very further end, establishing themselvesthere, where the shade of a tall, round fir tree, planted at thefoot of the yard below, fell across the building of a morning.
"It was prettier down on the bricks," Luclarion had told them. Butthey thought otherwise.
"Luclarion doesn't know," said Frank. "People don't know things, Ithink. I wonder why, when they've got old, and ought to? It's likethe sea-shore here, I guess, only the stones are all stuck down, andyou mustn't pick up the loose ones either."
Frank touched lightly, as she spoke, the white and black and graybits of gravel that covered the flat roof.
"And it smells—like the pine forests!"
The sun was hot and bright upon the fir branches and along thetar-cemented roof.
"How do you know about sea-shores and p