Goodness! I reckon the neighbors would have a fit if they could see me of a night when I dress up and step out on the porch roof, making like I'm Juliet in Shakespeare. I wear a lace thing over my head and let a pair of Cousin Eunice's last year's bedroom slippers represent Romeo with fur around the top. They are the kind he wore the night they took me to see him and are all I can find in the house that looks at all like him. Nobody gets to see me doing this, though, for I lock the door. Somehow I think it would be a nicer world if you could always lock the door on your advising friends. Last summer Rufe said I was so clever for my age (_he_ said) that I ought to be in the city (I like this kind of advice) at a good school; so father and mother decided to move to the city and take Mammy Lou and spend the winter and all the other winters until I could get educated and live in a flat. So we went, me writing much sorry poetry about leaving my old home. The older I get the more I think of poetry and I reckon by the time I'm engaged I'll be crazy about it! Our leaving was very sad, poor little Lares and Penates crying so hard at the depot where they went to tell Mammy Lou good-by that a drummer who was traveling with a kind heart gave them a quarter apiece to hush. I never admired the name of flat from the first and when we started to rent one I admired it less than ever. It consists of a very large house, divided up, and no place to kill a chicken. There is also no place to warm your feet, nor to pop corn. In fact, there are more places where you _can't_ do things than where you can. Rufe took us to every one in town nearly, and mammy paid particular attention to how the kitchens were fixed and asked what became of the potato peelings with no pigs to eat them up. Finally, after everything had been explained to her, she spoke up in the midst of a lady's flat with tears in her eyes and said: "Mis' Mary, le's go back to the country whar slop is called _slop_; up here it's '_gawbage_!'" Father and mother were both delighted that going back had been mentioned without either one of _them_ saying it first, for both of their feet were sore from looking for flats; and they like to have fallen over each other in agreeing with mammy. "God never intended for _human beings_ to live in flats," father said, after the elevator had put us down on dry land once more, drawing a deep breath. "Nor in cities either," Rufe agreed, with a far-away look in his eyes, like he might be thinking of the chestnut hunts and black haws of his boyhood.