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stayed with her grandmother at various seasons, but some-
how all her visits had a flavour of peaches. On the other side,
across the street, was an old house that was called the Dutch
House—a peculiar structure dating from the earliest colo-
nial time, composed of bricks that had been painted yellow,
crowned with a gable that was pointed out to strangers, de-
fended by a rickety wooden paling and standing sidewise to
the street. It was occupied by a primary school for children
of both sexes, kept or rather let go, by a demonstrative lady
of whom Isabel’s chief recollection was that her hair was
fastened with strange bedroomy combs at the temples and
that she was the widow of some one of consequence. The
little girl had been offered the opportunity of laying a foun-
dation of knowledge in this establishment; but having spent
a single day in it, she had protested against its laws and had
been allowed to stay at home, where, in the September days,
when the windows of the Dutch House were open, she used
to hear the hum of childish voices repeating the multiplica-
tion-table—an incident in which the elation of liberty and
the pain of exclusion were indistinguishably mingled. The
foundation of her knowledge was really laid in the idleness
of her grandmother’s house, where, as most of the other in-
mates were not reading people, she had uncontrolled use of
a library full of books with frontispieces, which she used
to climb upon a chair to take down. When she had found
one to her taste—she was guided in the selection chiefly by
the frontispiece—she carried it into a mysterious apartment
which lay beyond the library and which was called, tradi-
tionally, no one knew why, the office. Whose office it had

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