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 familiar. He had to ask ever so many questions, polite questions you know, for he was not a rude little boy at all, but it seemed so wonderful to him to be here at last that he could not help exclaiming at everything. There was the parlor just as he had imagined it, with the row of seashells across the mantle and the door opening into the porch and garden and beyond the library with its great deep fireplace, its old-fashioned andirons and red brick hearth. Nothing was new in the old house, everything had been made years and years ago when there was no machinery, and chairs and furniture had to be turned by hand; for that reason people who made them took more pains than they do now, so that they would last a long time, and only the colours in the brocades had faded and the silk worn away in the cross-stitch work of the antimacassars.