Betsy opened the door and was greeted by her kitten, who ran to her,
purring and arching her back to be stroked.

"Well," said Aunt Abigail, looking up from the pan of apples in her lap,
"I suppose you're starved, aren't you? Get yourself a piece of bread and
butter, why don't you? and have one of these apples."

As the little girl sat down by her, munching fast on this provender, she
asked: "What desk did you get?"

Elizabeth Ann thought for a moment, cuddling Eleanor up to her face. "I
think it is the third from the front in the second row." She wondered
why Aunt Abigail cared. "Oh, I guess that's your Uncle Henry's desk.
It's the one his father had, too. Are there a couple of H. P.'s carved
on it?"

Betsy nodded.

"His father carved the H. P. on the lid, so Henry had to put his inside.
I remember the winter he put it there. It was the first season Mother
let me wear real hoop skirts. I sat in the first seat on the third row."

Betsy ate her apple more and more slowly, trying to take in what Aunt
Abigail had said. Uncle Henry and HIS FATHER--why Moses or Alexander the
Great didn't seem any further back in the mists of time to Elizabeth Ann
than did Uncle Henry's FATHER! And to think he had been a little boy,
right there at that desk! She stopped chewing altogether for a moment
and stared into space. Although she was only nine years old, she was
feeling a little of the same rapt wonder, the same astonished sense of
the reality of the people who have gone before, which make a first visit