REBELLIOUS HEARTS
Although Mrs. Cooper's boarders were privileged to sit in the parlor in the evening, the Dorrances rarely availed themselves of this permission. For the atmosphere of the formal and over-punctilious drawing-room was even more depressing than that of the dining-room. And even had the children wanted to stay there, which they didn't, Mrs. Dorrance would have been afraid that their irrepressible gayety would have been too freely exhibited. And another thing, they had to study their next day's lessons, for their hours between school and dinner-time were always spent out of doors.
And so every evening they congregated in their grandmother's room, and were studious or frivolous as their mood dictated.
To-night they were especially fractious.
"Grannymother," exclaimed Lilian, "it just seems as if I couldn't live in this house another minute! there is nobody here I like, except our own selves, and I just hate it all!"
"Did you go to school to-day, my little man?" said Leicester, shaking his finger in such funny imitation of Mr. Bannister, that Lilian had to laugh, in spite of her discontentment.
"I'm so tired of him, too," went on Lilian, still scowling. "Can't we go and live somewhere else, grandmother?"
Mrs. Dorrance sighed. She knew only too well the difficulty of securing desirable rooms in a desirable locality with her four lively young charges; and especially at the modest price she was able to pay. Already they had moved six times in their two years of boarding-house life, and Mrs. Dorrance dreaded the thought of a seventh similar experience.
"Lilian, dear," she said, gently, "you know how hard it is to find any nice boarding-house where they will take four noisy children. And I'm sure, in many respects, this is the best one we've ever found."
"I suppose it is," said Dorothy, looking up from the French lesson she was studying, "but I know one thing! as soon as I get through school, and I don't mean to go many years more, we're going to get away from boarding-houses entirely, and we're going to have a home of our own. I don't suppose it can be in Texas, or the Desert of Sahara, but we'll have a house or an apartment or something, and live by ourselves."