Miss Primrose

All little, white-haired, smiling ladies remind me of Letitia—Letitia Primrose, whom you saw just now in a corner of our garden among the petunias. You thought her odd, no doubt, not knowing her as I or as the children do who find her dough-nuts sweet after school is done, or their English cousins, those little brown-feathered beggars waiting on winter mornings in the snow-drifts at her sill. As for myself, I must own to a certain kinship, as it were, not of blood but of propinquity, a long next-doorhood in our youth, a tenderer, nameless tie in after years, and always a fond partiality which began one day by our old green fence.