The study is so small that we did n’t have to buy as much furniture as we expected to. I have an oak desk with a rolling top that makes a noise like some one shovelling coal when you open and shut it, and usually sticks half-way. Of course, when we finally got it out from town (Boston is about four miles from Cambridge, and it takes anywhere from three days to a week for an express wagon to make the trip), we found that it was much too large to go up the staircase. But Mrs. Chester said we could take out the back of the house and have it swung up to the room on ropes—the "young men" always did that when they wanted pianos or sofas, or desks like mine. I wasn’t present at the operation, as I had to go in town to lunch with mamma, but it was successfully performed (by "a real handy gentleman from down Gloucester way, who used to be a fisherman and is a carpenter now"), for I found the desk in the room when I returned and the walls of the house looked about the same. Besides the desk I have an oak chair with a back that lets up and down by means of a brass rod; its cushions are covered with gray corduroy. Then there is another chair, a revolving one (very painful), that goes with the desk. We bought a bookcase at a shop just off the Square, from an odious little man who put his hand on my shoulder and said to mamma, "They _will_ grow up, won’t they?" It looks rather bare, as there aren’t any books in it yet; but mamma would n’t let me fill it, although right next door to the place where we bought it there were loads of books in the window for five and ten cents apiece. We got some Turkish rugs at an auction in town. The man said they never would wear out. When they arrived here and I saw them for the first time by daylight (they had gas at the sale) I knew what he meant. However, mamma darned them very nicely, and as everything else looks so new, perhaps it’s just as well. I ’ve put the photographs of mamma and papa, and the one of Mildred in the ball dress and big hat with white ostrich feathers, and the one of Sidney in his little cart with the two goats, on the mantelpiece. I ’m afraid I never cared much for the goats when I was at home, but to-night I ’ve been thinking of all the funny things they used to do and wondering if I’ll ever see them again. They’re such cute little beasts. Over the mantelpiece I have two crimson flags with the sticks crossed.