LAUREL DIDN’T LIKE Boston. She didn’t know of a single winding river, over which to glide upon skates, in and out among alder bushes; nor of a single bare hillside, white with the first snowfall, down which to fly into the sunset, upon skis; nor of any stone wall to follow for pussywillows in March; nor rocky pasture-land nor rough woodland, to steal away to, all alone, in April, in search of trailing arbutus.

She didn’t know of any corner store where stationery was sold and pencil boxes and return balls and gumdrops, seven for five cents, and coconut cakes, three for two. She didn’t know of any hump-backed cobbler, whose tiny shop smelled deliciously of leather and was such a cheery place to visit when school was over and her mother was out. Jake, the hump-backed cobbler, would bow and bob at her like a Rip Van Winkle dwarf, whenever she came into his little box, and sweep off a place with his grimy shirt-sleeve for her to sit down upon, and chuckle and spit, and tell her stories about what his father used to do when he was drunk.

Laurel missed Jake. She missed Tony, too—the black-haired, olive-skinned young Greek, who kept a fruit store, and gave her a plum or a pear, or a banana, not the least bit rotten, whenever she went to see him; and, smiling, showing his beautiful white teeth, told her about the lovely dark girl in Athens, waiting for him to send her a ticket to come to America and marry him.

She missed Mrs. McDavitt, who had so many children, and lived in Cataract Village in the top of a tenement house, whom her mother used to take her to see occasionally of late—but whom she must never refer to, any more than to her grandfather—the queer, glum, ragged old man, who lived all alone in a little reddish house, which her mother called “that hovel,” on the edge of the river, whom occasionally, also, of late, her mother used to take her to see. She missed Sadie, the chambermaid at the King Arthur, and Michael Dolan, the policeman; and Jim Doherty, the mailman, who knew her father’s handwriting; and “peg-legged Eddy,” who sold pencils and shoestrings at the corner of Main and Deposit Streets. Laurel missed all her Milhampton friends. For Laurel had friends in Milhampton, although they did not attend Miss Fillibrown’s private school.

Most of all, perhaps, she missed Miss Thomas, the kind, wrinkled-faced, quiet-voiced librarian at the Milhampton Public Library, who let her wander at will, alone, among the book-stacks, and take out and put back any volume she pleased without asking.