"I wish we didn't have to live in a boarding-house!" said Dorothy Dorrance, flinging herself into an armchair, in her grandmother's room, one May afternoon, about six o'clock.
She made this remark almost every afternoon, about six o'clock, whatever the month or the season, and as a rule, little attention was paid to it. But to-day her sister Lilian responded, in a sympathetic voice,
"I wish we didn't have to live in a boarding-house!"
Whereupon Leicester, Lilian's twin brother, mimicking his sister's tones, dolefully repeated, "I wish we didn't have to live in a boarding-house!"
And then Fairy, the youngest Dorrance, and the last of the quartet, sighed forlornly, "I wish we didn't have to live in a boarding-house!"
There was another occupant of the room. A gentle white-haired old lady, whose sweet face and dainty fragile figure had all the effects of an ivory miniature, or a painting on porcelain.
"My dears," she said, "I'm sure I wish you didn't."
"Don't look like that, grannymother," cried Dorothy, springing to kiss the troubled face of the dear old lady. "I'd live here a million years, rather than have you look so worried about it. And anyway, it wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the dinners."
"I don't mind the dinners," said Leicester, "in fact I would be rather sorry not to have them. What I mind is the cramped space, and the shut-up-in-your-own-room feeling. I spoke a piece in school last week, and I spoke it awful well, too, because I just meant it. It began, 'I want free life, and I want fresh air,' and that's exactly what I do want. I wish we lived in Texas, instead of on Manhattan Island. Texas has a great deal more room to the square yard, and I don't believe people are crowded down there."
"There can't be more room to a square yard in one place than another," said Lilian, who was practical.
"I mean back yards and front yards and side yards, – and I don't care whether they're square or not," went on Leicester, warming to his subject. "My air-castle is situated right in the middle of the state of Texas, and it's the only house in the state."
"Mine is in the middle of a desert island," said Lilian; "it's so much nicer to feel sure that you can get to the water, no matter in what direction you walk away from your house."
"A desert island would be nice," said Leicester; "it would be more exciting than Texas, I suppose, on account of the wild animals. But then in Texas, there are wild men and wild animals both."
"I like plenty of room, too," said Dorothy, "but I want it inside my house as well as out. Since we are choosing, I think I'll choose to live in the Madison Square Garden, and I'll have it moved to the middle of a western prairie."
"Well, children," said Mrs. Dorrance, "your ideas are certainly big enough, but you must leave the discussion of them now, and go to your small cramped boarding-house bedrooms, and make yourselves presentable to go down to your dinner in a boarding-house dining-room."
This suggestion was carried out in the various ways that were characteristic of the Dorrance children.
Dorothy, who was sixteen, rose from her chair and humming a waltz tune, danced slowly and gracefully across the room. The twins, Lilian and Leicester, fell off of the arms of the sofa, where they had been perched, scrambled up again, executed a sort of war-dance and then dashed madly out of the door and down the hall.
Fairy, the twelve year old, who lived up to her name in all respects, flew around the room, waving her arms, and singing in a high soprano, "Can I wear my pink sash? Can I wear my pink sash?"
"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Dorrance, "you may wear anything you like, if you'll only keep still a minute. You children are too boisterous for a boarding-house. You ought to be in the middle of a desert or somewhere. You bewilder me!"
But about fifteen minutes later it was four decorous young Dorrances who accompanied their grandmother to the dining-room. Not that they wanted to be sedate, or enjoyed being quiet, but they were well-bred children in spite of their rollicking temperaments. They knew perfectly well how to behave properly, and always did it when the occasion demanded.
And, too, the atmosphere of Mrs. Cooper's dining-room was an assistance rather than a bar to the repression of hilarity.
The Dorrances sat at a long table, two of the children on either side of their grandmother, and this arrangement was one of their chief grievances.
"If we could only have a table to ourselves," Leicester often said, "it wouldn't be so bad. But set up side by side, like the teeth in a comb, cheerful conversation is impossible."
"But, my boy," his grandmother would remonstrate, "you must learn to converse pleasantly with those who sit opposite you. You can talk with your sisters at other times."
So Leicester tried, but it is exceedingly difficult for a fourteen year old boy to adapt himself to the requirements of polite conversation.
On the evening of which we are speaking, his efforts, though well meant, were unusually unsuccessful.
