Its owner’s contemplation was cut short by the far-off whir of the trolley, sounding clearly through the still morning. Miss Lyndesay walked quickly along the curving road to the Common where she was to receive her guests. Reaching the long narrow green, where a few cows nibbled placidly as in the days when a green in the center of the village was a necessary defensive measure, she walked idly up and down. The straggling road under the great elms passed the plain white meeting-house, dating from 1813, the Academy with its belfry, the little general store and post-office combined, and wound out of sight between dignified old houses, “like Aunt Abigail’s–mine now,” she corrected her thought happily. No one was in sight. Up the road came the trolley, jogging comfortably along. It stopped at the Common and its two passengers almost fell into the arms that waited to receive them.
“O-eeeeee!” sighed Hannah, getting as close to Miss Lyndesay as she could on one side, while Frieda did the same on the other with a similar ejaculation.
“Two blue girls this time!” exclaimed Miss Lyndesay. 135 “That is a very becoming suit, Frieda,” and then forestalling any answer, for she had known of Frau Lange’s letter to Mrs. Eldred and had guessed that Frieda would not take altogether kindly to the new clothes, she inquired of Hannah as to the health of her father and mother.
“They’re all right,” answered Hannah briefly. “And I am so glad to be here! Isn’t it just the dearest, sleepiest place you ever saw in all your life?”
“Is it your first visit here?” asked Miss Lyndesay. “I supposed you knew these villages by heart.”
“I don’t,” confessed Hannah. “I go to school all winter, and in the summer we go to the shore, and we haven’t any aunts or grandmothers or things like that living around here, so I don’t see places like this except in passing through them.”
“Well, you have a sort of aunt and grandmother combined living in Brookmeadow now, and I shall expect you to visit her often. How does it seem to you, Frieda?”
“It’s bigger than I thought it would be,” answered Frieda. “Hannah said it was a Dorf. I thought there would be only two or three houses, and many little huts all close together, but we passed many houses.”
“It is a good thing for you to see a New England village,” said Miss Lyndesay, “as part of the 136 education you came for. And when you get out to Wisconsin, you will think you are in a different country altogether.”
“I did,” laughed Hannah. “Why, it looked as though it had been laid out with a ruler, and the trees were so little I felt as though they ought to be in flower-pots.”