My aunt ran down at that, partly dressed, and screamed in her excitement. With fluttering, nervous fingers she tore open the envelope, and examined the contents in a breathless minute. “Stanwood sent it,” she laughed, “there’s tickets for America and a money order for five pounds!” and then she gave in to a hysterical relapse which required the calling in of the green-grocer’s wife. It _was_ a Merry Christmas! _Chapter III. My Schoolmates Teach me American_ _Chapter III. My Schoolmates Teach me American_ It was an extraordinary excuse that Uncle Stanwood gave for his neglect of us. He disposed of the matter by saying, in his Christmas letter, “I was so busy and so hard put to that I had no heart to write till I had gathered enough money to send for you. I know it must have worried you.” His steamship tickets, however, had suddenly put us in the limelight in the town. “The Brindins are going over!” was the word that passed around. I can imagine no more perfect fame than the United States had gained in the minds of the men and women of our little town. America was conceived as the center of human desire, the pivot of worldly wealth, the mirror of a blissful paradise. If we had fallen heirs to peerages or had been called to Victoria’s court, it is doubtful if more out-and-out respect would have been showered on us than was ours when it was known that we were going to the “States.” The impression prevailed that in America the shabbiest pauper gets a coat of gold. During the packing, when the neighbors dropped in while Mrs. Girion made a hot brew of porter and passed it around to the visitors and the workers, an America was constructed for us rivaling the most extravagant fairy-tale ever told by Grimm. “Yis,” chattered Old Scroggs, “they’s wunnerful likely things over theer in Hammerica, I’m told. I heer’s ’at they spends all ther coppers for toffy and such like morsels, havin’ goold a plenty--real goold! Loads o’ it, they saay!” “That’s so,” put in Maggie, our next-door neighbor. “Everybody has a chance, too. Double wages for very little work. All sorts of apples and good things to eat. Fine roads, too, and everybody on cycles; they’re so cheap out there. They say the sun is always out, too, and not much rain!”