I.
THIS WAY, AND THAT.
The parlor blinds were shut, and all the windows of the third-story rooms were shaded; but the pantry window, looking out on a long low shed, such as city houses have to keep their wood in and to dry their clothes upon, was open; and out at this window had come two little girls, with quiet steps and hushed voices, and carried their books and crickets to the very further end, establishing themselves there, where the shade of a tall, round fir tree, planted at the foot of the yard below, fell across the building of a morning.
"It was prettier down on the bricks," Luclarion had told them. But they thought otherwise.
"Luclarion doesn't know," said Frank. "People don't know things, I think. I wonder why, when they've got old, and ought to? It's like the sea-shore here, I guess, only the stones are all stuck down, and you mustn't pick up the loose ones either."
Frank touched lightly, as she spoke, the white and black and gray bits 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 the tar-cemented roof.