Laughing Last

mantels. Joseph Romley had chosen it because he said it was so big a man could think in it; he liked the seclusion, too, that the surrounding wall promised. If his wife

en the furnace was not needing cleaning and the plumbing overhauling. But the wind sang cheerily down the great chimneys and the sun poured in through the windows and the ancient elms housed host

ed a sunny room over the study. In a back room Victoria and Sidney still used the narrow beds of nursery days. Only lately Victoria had painted them gray with a trim of pink rose buds

an old wardrobe next to them. There she had her possessions, a flat-topped desk with long wobbly legs which she reached by a box balanced on an old stool, the skeleton of a sofa on which sat five dusty and neglected dolls, a scrap of carpeting, amazing as to red roses but sadly frayed about i

or of the wardrobe so as to shut off any unannounced approach to her den, she tiptoed to a corner, knelt dow

type: "Dorothea, friend and confidante of Sidney Romley." Jerking herself closer to the window she opened the book a

st Dor

just rights. I am to have the next Egg. I had to make a scene before I got them to promise I could have it but it was ever thus with rights. I swear solemnly now to you, dear Dorothea, that I shall never cry again in fron

traveled so much that it bores her to think of it. When she talked she lifted a curtain and let me peep into a wonderful world. I think she liked me. She's going to put me in a theme only she is going to make me like Isolde who just to be mean made me receive the Leaguers this morning and went upstairs and did things as though it was not Saturday at all. But for tha

with a 'bonny bright ribbon.' My eyes are plain blue and hers are a mysterious gray like an evening sky. Her skin is like creamy satin touched with rose petals and I think it is natural for it is not a bit like Josie Walker's wh

forth to meet adventure. I will not let the others know what I am planning for, as I said heretofore, Isolde does not understand me and Victoria would only

icky when she laughs. At all other times I love her dearly. She is so beautiful that sometimes when I look

nd I shall think of Isolde and Trude for I gleaned from something Isolde said to me this morning when she was mad that she and Trude long to escape from the League the way I do. But they think they have to stay here the rest of their lives. Mayhap I can bring escape to them. Vick w

ne so well that she paus

p and secret chamber." Having secured the loose planking she rose and turned her agile mind to the consideration of a desire that had began shaping when Trude said

e nor Trude had gone further than fifty miles from Middletown until the two trustees, after their father's death, had summoned them to New York. Victoria, seemingly born to more fortune than the others, had been whisked away on several trips with Godmother Jocelyn,

h various signs that meant much to her and nothing to any one else, the different localities of which she read in books or newspapers. When a Leaguer introduced some devotee from some far-off city Sidney prompt

sit had appeared like an adventure, in later retrospection it was stupid. It had been just like being at Nancy's house in Middletown; Nancy's father and mother and Snap, the dog, and Caroline, the colored cook, and much of the furniture were all

start off for just anywhere. All the trips she knew anything about had some objective; one went somewhere to see somebody. Trude went to see Aunt Edith White, I

many; she was always going to reunions at some aunt's or cousin's or her mother was having a big "family" dinner. It would help her now to have a

d her and Nancy, then they had thrown it aside for something more novel, little dreaming that it was destined to hold an important part in t

sprawling branches of which hung round things much like grapefruits, each ring encircling one or two names. From each fruit dangled more fr

to read their names. But finding an "Ann Ellis" in a corner of the tree had brought them suddenly close to her. "Ann Ellis Green"-why, that was her mother's name. She and Nancy figured out at once that these were her mother's ancestors

especial value to Sidney, brought up as she had bee

dren, just as that Ann Ellis in the round enclosure had had her mother and her mother in turn had had I

ook. In search of cousins she now scanned these carefully, with a shivery feeling of prowli

. Served in the 102nd Regiment at Gettysburg. Awarded th

dney read this twice with a thrill. That was adventure for you. Small-pox. She wondered if Priscilla had been beautiful like Victor

tman for ten years did not interest h

he book the little notes about all the Ellises so that when the "Little Ann" grew up she would know all about them and be proud-Priscilla who had died of small-pox and the ancestor with the Congressional Medal. Sidney suddenly thought i

er own grandfather. And he had had a tree behind him-there had doubtless been as many Greens as Ellises. She wished she knew what the

for far shores on his good ship the Betsy King which same has come into his posse

hip the Betsy King were reported as returning safely from the Azores, and

etsy King had foundered off the Cape in the storm of '72-with all lives. "May

had evidently thought a great deal of this brother who had sailed the oceans wide. He had added, beneath the entry of the foundering of the Betsy King: "Our loving prayers go out in behalf of our b

UPON AN ENTRY

ays seemed to be beckoning to ships to come to Massachusetts. She knew all about it-she and Nancy had read a delightful book in which a little girl had lived with two guardians who were old sea captains-like Ezekiel Green. And she, Sidney Romley, had never known that she had relatives, real flesh-and-blood relatives, lots of them, no d

t. She pictured Cousin Achsa living in a square white cupolaed house of noble dimensions

communicate at once with Asabel and Achsa. Not a day must be lost. When one had girded

efore her for reference in spelling her relatives' names. Then she took

ult to frame her unusual letter. Indeed, th

Cousin

she hesitated over this outrageous fib, then decided it was justified by the necessity for tact. However, some quick calculation caused her to amend her statement.) At least my older s

spend the Egg any way I want to. I think I will go somewhere on a train. I came across a family tree of the New England Ellises which told all about the Greens, too, and Ezekiel Green who is your father as you know and his good ship the Betsy King which I think was thrilling and how his soul is

ctionate and ne

Ellis

n Provincetown. This Achsa might have married and have another name. Then she remembered that Isolde always put their own address in one corner o

on. I've called

in a straight thin line of red. Life must, of course, appear to go on as usual-school and the same stupid things she did every day, Nancy, who was so distressingly short of the