d Miss
Lyndesay, "as part of the 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."

"Not the beech woods, surely?"

"Dear me, no. But in the town itself. The beech woods are real forest.
Is this the house? O, Aunt Clara, wouldn't Catherine _love_ it?"

Miss Lyndesay was so unused to the house, herself, that she took a keen
delight in showing the girls all over it, taking them from one big room
into another, and telling them how to appreciate the fine old furniture.

"The hangings are all new," she explained. "Aunt Abigail's taste was not
like her heart! She kept the old furniture, but she had gaudy
wall-papers and thick lace curtains, and I have had them all replaced.
They aren't done yet, everywhere, but these main rooms are. And she had
the fireplace bricked up and a stove in the living-room. I found these
andirons in the garret."

"O, let's see the garret," begged Hannah. "We haven't any, with old
things in it, I mean. You know our house is only a little older than I
am, and mother came from the West and she didn't have heirlooms, and
father had nothing whatever when they started. I should think this house
would have been full of treasures."

"It was. I found several good chairs and a desk in the garret. I shall
have them refinished as soon as I can get around to it. There is a trunk
that I have only peeped into. I saved it for you girls to open. But you
must come out into the garden now, while the sun is there."

Frieda had taken only a moderate interest in the house, but when they
entered the tangled garden, German exclamations poured from her lips in
a rapturous stream.

"_Himmlisch! Reizend! Famos! Ach, wie wunderhuebsch! Was nennt man
dies? Und dies?_" She flew from one blossom to another, sniffing,
admiring, and asking questions about those that were unknown to her,
naming the others in German, and altogether showing a degree of
enthusiasm which nothing American had hitherto been able to arouse in
her. It was not because of Karl's compact, but because of her mighty
love of flowers. She seemed to forget the others as she knelt before a
little white tea-rose, kissing it and calling it pretty names.

Miss Lyndesay and Hannah watched her.

"Now she seems more like herself