Dear Miss Blue,

How lucky you were to have found Fanny's proper papers so that the school officials would be able to recognize and admit the smartly dressed and French Braided young girl to their Upper Class School For Young Aristocratic Children from Aristocratic Families.

Of course, when you bring up our days in Gagetown, I can hardly contain myself! Yes, those were the times - chasing around the town with daylong abandon, never returning home except for lunch and even that was not too necessary since we could pluck green apples from the small apple trees growing on the hill. We brought one of our mother's salt shakers (salt was what made the small green apples so delicious, we said to one another) and there we were on the hill where the Freight Train sped by once a day and where we waited for the two railroad men driving the Hand Car to come by. They checked the tracks for broken ties and any other thing that could cause a train wreck and we would wave our apple-clenched hands at them and blow them kisses and they would wave back and doff their blue and white railroad caps at us. Our mother told us that we were never to bring our baby sister - she was only two - with us IF we planned to sit on the Sand Hill and eat Green Apples And Wave to the Railroad Men. So, we never told her - our baby sister - where we were going even when she cried, which she did.

We were sad when we had to say goodbye to Gagetown; my mother said I Never Got Over IT. I don't know what she meant by that, do you? Something about "running wild and eating better."

Love, Pearl

Remembering The Billy Goats Gruff and the Norwegian Trolls. . .they all had the same name, just different voices. . . .