"In the city! all summer! well, I just guess not!" shouted Leicester. "I'm going off of Manhattan Island, if I have to go as a tramp."
"Tramping isn't so bad," said Lilian, brightening up; "we could carry our things in handkerchiefs slung on sticks over our shoulders."
"But grannymother couldn't tramp," said Fairy.
"The streets will be broad and the lanes will be narrow,
So we'll have to take grannymother in a wheel-barrow,"
chanted Dorothy. "But tell us truly, granny, dear, why can't we go away?"
Grandmother Dorrance looked sad, but her face wore that air of placid determination which the children had come to look upon as indicative of final and unalterable decision.
"This last winter," she said, "was much more expensive than the winter before. There was the doctor and the nurse, when Fairy was ill; we are paying a little more board here than we did at Mrs. Watson's; and then, somehow, your clothes seem to cost more every year. I don't know how it is, I'm sure," and the sweet old face assumed the worried look that always pained Dorothy's heart, "but somehow there isn't any money left for a summer trip."
"But grandma," said Leicester, with a great desire to be businesslike, "can't we find a place to board in the country, for just the same price as we pay here?"
"No, it always costs a little more per week at any summer place than in the city. And that is not all; there are the traveling expenses, and you'd all need new summer clothes, and there are many extra expenses, such as laundry work, and things that you children know nothing about."
Dorothy sat thinking. She had closed her French book and sat with her elbows on the table in front of her, and her chin in her hands. Dorothy Dorrance was a very pretty girl, although it had never occurred to her to think so. She had dark eyes like her father's, but had inherited her mother's blonde hair. Not golden, but a light golden-brown, which fell into soft shining curls which tossed about her temples, and escaped from the thick twist at the back of her head. She had a sunshiny smile, which was almost always visible, for Dorothy was light-hearted and of a merry nature. She was an all-round capable girl, and could turn her hand to almost anything she undertook. She had a capable mind too, and often astonished her grandmother by her intelligent grasp of business matters or financial problems. Indeed, Dorothy at sixteen had a far more practical knowledge of the ways and means of existence than Mrs. Dorrance at seventy.