“Robin has never seen a clover field,” I answered, “nor a live cow. And I haven’t tasted buttermilk since I was seven years old. Just think, the woods are full of violets this very minute,—and thrushes, and bluebirds!”
“I know it,” returned Ernie, glancing pensively out the window at the battered row of ash-cans that lined our dusty street. “I wish we could rent this old house,” she added, vindictively, “and go away, and start a chicken farm! I’m tired of boarders, Elizabeth;—even when they are as kind and considerate as Miss Brown and the Hippo family!”
“You can’t be as tired of them as I am,” I answered,—“because you don’t have to order their meals! But we would need the front stoop browned over, and the cellar concreted, before we could dream of letting; and such things cost money. It just seems as if our hands were tied.”
“Which needn’t prevent them from wielding a broom!” exclaimed Ernie, springing up with an energetic shake of her short skirts. “Come on, child,—I’m ashamed of us! A little hard work is the medicine we need. The idea of sitting here in opposite rocking-chairs, croakin’ at one another like a pair of discontented grannies, when Robin and Geof are growing fat in Atlantic City, and mother is having a really truly holiday for the first time in years! I’m going up to begin on the attic this instant; and if we have to feel blue in June,—why, that’s nearly two months off, yet.”
“But it’s four o’clock, Ernie,” I protested. “Don’t you think we had better put off the house-cleaning till to-morrow?”
“No, I don’t,” returned Ernie, impetuously. “There is a pile of magazines in the workshop that hasn’t been looked over since the year 1, Tecpatl! Mother told me weeks ago that she wanted them sent to the Philippines. She asked me to go through them then. So, come on.”
“Very well,” I answered, meekly. And a few moments later Ernie and I were seated on the workshop floor, each with our separate bunch of dusty literature.
“Here’s that nice story about the rogue elephant,” began Ernie, comfortably. “I don’t think we can let that go. And, oh! here’s the copy of Scribbler’s with The Magic Ring. Do you remember, we read it aloud one Christmas? It is about the two little boys who went to the Circus.”
“I thought,” returned I, severely, “that we came up here to get these magazines ready to send to the Philippines?”
“So we did,” mumbled Ernie, “but if we don’t go through them, how are we to know which ones we ought to send?”