"I guess it's meant fast enough," replied Luclarion. "But as for what it will be for the children,—why, that's according to what you all make of it. And that's the stump."
Luclarion Grapp was fifty-four years old; but her views of life were precisely the same that they had been at twenty-eight.
VI.
AND.
There is a piece of Z——, just over the river, that they call "And."
It began among the school-girls; Barbara Holabird had christened it, with the shrewdness and mischief of fourteen years old. She said the "and-so-forths" lived there.
It was a little supplementary neighborhood; an after-growth, coming up with the railroad improvements, when they got a freight station established on that side for the East Z—— mills. "After Z——, what should it be but 'And?'" Barbara Holabird wanted to know. The people who lived there called it East Square; but what difference did that make?
It was two miles Boston-ward from Z—— centre, where the down trains stopped first; that was five minutes gained in the time between it and the city. Land was cheap at first, and sure to come up in value; so there were some streets laid out at right angles, and a lot of houses put up after a pattern, as if they had all been turned out of blanc-mange moulds, and there was "East Square." Then people began by-and-by to build for themselves, and a little variety and a good deal of ambition came in. They had got to French roofs now; this was just before the day of the multitudinous little paper collar-boxes with beveled covers, that are set down everywhere now, and look as if they could be lifted up by the chimneys, any time, and be carried off with a thumb and finger. Two and a half story houses, Mansarded, looked grand; and the East Square people thought nothing slight of themselves, though the "old places" and the real Z—— families were all over on West Hill.
Mrs. Megilp boarded in And for the summer.