Luella kissed Hanny with frantic fervor and begged her to come again. She was so used to boys, she cared nothing about Ben.
The little girl had so much to tell Jim, who had been skating. The quarrelling parrots, the beautiful house, the queer little guinea-pigs, and the splendid hobby-horse that they didn't seem to care a bit about. "And Lu is a good deal like Dele, only not so nice or so funny, and her hair is awful black. She ran down-stairs with me in her arms and I was 'most frightened to death. I don't believe I would want to be her little sister. And the grandpa is like a picture of the old French people. And to think that he doesn't read English very well and always uses his French Bible. There were so many foreign people in New York at that time, I s'pose they couldn't all talk English."
"And they had preaching in Dutch after 1800 in the Middle Dutch Church," said Jim. "And even after the sermons were in English the singing had to be in Dutch. Aunt Nancy said the place used to be crowded just to hear the people sing."
"It's queer how they could understand each other. Do you suppose the children had to learn every language?"
Jim gave a great laugh at that.
CHAPTER XIV
JOHN ROBERT CHARLES
The new President was inaugurated on the fourth of March. The little girl sighed to think how many Democratic people there were on her block. They put out flags and bunting, and illuminated in the evening. They had tremendous bonfires, and all the boys waived personal feeling and danced and whooped like wild Indians. No healthy, well-conditioned boy could resist the fragrance of a tar barrel.
Miss Lily Ludlow wore a red, white, and blue rosette with a tiny portrait of Mr. Polk in the centre. The public-school girls often walked up First Avenue and met Mrs. Craven's little girls going home. Lily used to stare at Hanny in an insolent manner. She and her sister could not forgive the fact that Miss Margaret had not called.