The first call was on Aunt Hoyt--no true aunt, of course, but “aunt” by mutual compliment. She lived in a tiny house on Conant Street, set close to the sidewalk and shaded by an enormous mulberry tree. I sought out my usual seat, a little hardwood stool to whose top was neatly tacked a square of Brussels carpeting and whose cover, on being lifted, revealed a boot-jack, a shoe-brush, and a round box of blacking. The legs were deeply notched, and I amused myself by fitting my feet in the notches and occasionally coming inadvertently back to the floor with an echoing bump. Now and then Aunt Hoyt, who was little and wrinkled, and whose glasses had double lenses in the middle so that I could not keep my eyes from them when she spoke, would turn to address an observation at me. “How long her hair is! Do you think it is quite healthy for her to have such long hair? I’ll warrant you don’t like to have it combed, do you, dear?” If Aunt Hoyt had only known the depth of the boredom with which I had this inane question put to me! It was one of the wonders of my days: the utterly absurd questions that grown-up people could ask. For example: “How do you do to-day?” What had any reasonable child to answer to that? Of course one was well. If one wasn’t, one would be kept at home. If one wasn’t, one wasn’t going to tell anyway. Or, “What’s she been doing lately?” Well! Was one likely to reply: “Burying snow. Hunting pig-nuts. Digging up pebbles from under the eaves. Making a secret play-house in the currant bushes that nobody knows about?” And unless one did thus tell one’s inmost secrets, what was there left to say? And if one kept a dignified silence, one was sulky! “She’s a good little girl, I’m sure. Is she much help to you?” Aunt Hoyt asked that day, and patted my hair as we took leave. Dear Aunt Hoyt, I know now that she was lonesome and longed for children and, like many another, had no idea how to treat them, save by making little conversational dabs at them.