The gamin proudly counted out upon the marble slab of that fashionable
flower store the sum of seventy-five cents.

The florist--blessings on him--is said not to have undeceived the little
fellows, but to have duly honored their "order," and the biggest and
most costly "Gates Ajar" piece to be had in the market went to the
hospital, and helped to bury Larks.

Of course, as is customary in the case of all authors who have written
one popular book, requests for work at once rained in on the new study
on Andover Hill. For it soon became evident that I must have a quiet
place to write in. In the course of time I found it convenient to take
for working hours a sunny room in the farm-house of the Seminary estate,
a large, old-fashioned building adjoining my father's house. In still
later years I was allowed to build over, for my own purposes, the
summer-house under the big elm in my father's garden, once used by my
mother for her own study, and well remembered by all persons interested
in Andover scenery. This building had been for some years used
exclusively as a mud-bakery by the boys; it was piled with those clay
turnovers and rolls and pies in whose manufacture the most select
circles of Andover youth delighted.

But the bakery was metamorphosed into a decent, dear little room, about
nine by eleven, and commanding the sun on the four sides of its
quadrangle. In fact, it was a veritable sun-bath; and how dainty was the
tip-drip of the icicles from the big elm-bough, upon the little roof! To
this spot I used to travel down in all weathers; sometimes when it was
so slippery on the hill behind the carriage-house (for the garden paths
were impassable in winter) that I have had to return to primitive
methods of locomotion, and just sit down and coast half the way on the