Laura and the twins wrote to her regularly, the twins with wild, childish scrawls, which hinted surprises at Christmas, and Laura with funny accounts of her own difficulties.
"You should have seen my waffles last evening," she would say. "They were black on one side and a delicate buff on the other."
"Laura made waffles," the twins would write. "William ate seven and we four."
Occasionally there would come a note in William's clear hand.
"Enclosed find a little spending-money. We hear that you are doing well. Be a good girl."
It would have been a very ungrateful girl who could have been very unhappy after that.
There were Christmas surprises in her cupboard, also. William's gifts of money had been well spent. On the shelf above the secretary at home, there had stood the battered school-books and a worn copy of "Thaddeus of Warsaw." Poor Thaddeus was to be overshadowed henceforth by several well-bound companions. There was "Westward Ho" for William, and "Lorna Doone" for Laura, and "Alice in Wonderland" for the twins, and a fairy-book for Albert. Rarely does the approach of Christmas find a person so entirely satisfied with her gifts as Sarah was. But Miss Ellingwood had selected them, and Miss Ellingwood was infallible.
There was another present which she was taking home. She had read halfway through the upper shelf of Miss Ellingwood's story-books, and she meant to remember them all, and then during the vacation, she would sit down before the fire after she had washed the supper dishes, and she would take Albert in her arms, and a twin would perch on each side of her on the old settle, and they should hear some stories that were stories.
She had become well acquainted with several of the professors who came in to call on Miss Ellingwood in the evenings. One was Professor Minturn, for whom she had read the paragraph of history on the first day of school. He seemed to grow more nervous each day, and more certain that his pupils might do more work if they would.