were stiff with
starch, they would not stir an inch to the breeze blowing in. The old
farm-house was trying to look young again, that was it! To look young
again: how many of us can do that, eh! for it was expecting a visitor, a
very young visitor indeed, a little boy was coming.

He was not an ordinary little boy, or at least the people at the
farm-house (Aunt Laura and Uncle Sam) did not think so--because his
mother when she was a little girl had gone there for a visit years and
years ago, just as he was coming to-day, and she had loved every nook
and cranny of the old house as they hoped he would love it, and to those
two people, it seemed almost as if she were coming back again, which
really couldn't happen, for that was ever so long ago.

But she had sent her little boy instead, hoping that the change of air
would do him good after the winter months spent leaning over school
books. So in the quaint low-ceiled bedroom upstairs, sheets that smelled
of lavender, with beautiful hand-embroidered initials, made by some
bride for her trousseau long ago, were spread on the tall four-poster
bed with its curious starched valence and silk patch-work quilt; the
pitcher on the wash-stand had been filled to the brim with cool clear
spring water, queer knit towels in basket weave design hung ready for
use, and a delicious odor of home-made bread floated up from the
regions below.

It was the little boy's first journey, everything was new to him--when
he got off at the station Uncle Sam met him and lifted him up to the
front seat of the carriage with his hand bag tucked in behind, as he had
lifted the little boy's mother up and seated her beside him, years ago.
And so they drove out together along the broad country roads, past the
green meadows, where quiet cows cropped the grass, until they came
within sight of the farm and windmill and turned into the leafy lane
under the spreading chestnut trees and stopped at the gate.

[Illustration: _Aunt Laura was there to welcome him._]

Aunt Laura was there to welcome him--the little boy's name was Laurie,
he had been given the name out of compliment to Aunt Laura; somehow or
other it was almost like "coming home" instead of "going away" he
thought, it was so home-like; perhaps it was because everything was so
very, very old, that their newness and strangeness had entirely worn
off. Perhaps it was because his mother had so often told him about it
all, that everything seemed so famili