V.
HOW THE NEWS CAME TO HOMESWORTH.
"I wish I lived in the city, and had a best friend," said Hazel Ripwinkley to Diana, as they sat together on the long, red, sloping kitchen roof under the arches of the willow-tree, hemming towels for their afternoon "stent." They did this because their mother sat on the shed roof under the fir, when she was a child, and had told them of it. Imagination is so much greater than fact, that these children, who had now all that little Frank Shiere had dreamed of with the tar smell and the gravel stones and the one tree,—who might run free in the wide woods and up the breezy hillsides,—liked best of all to get out on the kitchen roof and play "old times," and go back into their mother's dream.
"I wish I lived in a block of houses, and could see across the corner into my best friend's room when she got up in the morning!"
"And could have that party!" said Diana.
"Think of the clean, smooth streets, with red sidewalks, and people living all along, door after door! I like things set in rows, and people having places, like the desks at school. Why, you've got to go way round Sand Hill to get to Elizabeth Ann Dorridon's. I should like to go up steps, and ring bells!"
"I don't know," said Diana, slowly. "I think birds that build little nests about anywhere in the cunning, separate places, in the woods, or among the bushes, have the best time."
"Birds, Dine! It ain't birds, it's people! What has that to do with it?"
"I mean I think nests are better than martin-boxes."