The door opened out, close at the front, upon 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