CHAPTER IX
THE FRONT STAIRS
Marjorie had been at Grandma Sherwood's about weeks, and as a general thing she had been a pretty good little girl. She had tried to obey her mother's orders, and though it was not easy to keep her troublesome curls always just as they ought to be and her ribbon always in place, yet she had accomplished this fairly well, and Grandma said that she really deserved credit for it.
But to obey Grandma implicitly was harder still. Not that Marjorie ever meant to disobey or ever did it wilfully, but she was very apt to forget and, too, it seemed to be natural for her to get into mischief. And as it was always some new sort of mischief, which no one could have thought of forbidding, and as she was always so sorry for it afterward, there was more or less repentance and forgiveness going on all the time.
But, on the whole, she was improving, and Uncle Steve sometimes said that he believed she would live to grow up without tumbling off of something and breaking her neck, after all.
Grandma Sherwood found it far easier to forgive Marjorie's unintentional mischief than her forgetting of explicit commands.
One command in particular had caused trouble all summer. There were two front doors to Grandma's house and two halls. One of these halls opened into the great drawing-room on one side and a smaller reception room on the other, where callers were received. The stairs in this hall were of polished wood and were kept in a state of immaculate, mirror-like shininess by Jane, who took great pride in this especial piece of work.
The other front door opened into a hall less pretentious. This hall was between the drawingroom and the family library, and the stairs here were covered with thick, soft carpet.
It was Grandma's wish that the members of the family should usually use the carpeted stairs, for she too took great pride in the glossy, shining surface of the others. Uncle Steve preferred the carpeted stairs, anyway, as they led to the upper hall which opened into his own room, and Grandma invariably used them.
As a means of distinction, the wooden stairs were habitually called the Front Stairs; and, though they were equally front, the carpeted flight was always spoken of as the Other Stairs.