"Was Elsie with you?" asked Clover, as she pinioned the side of an apron to the line.
"Yes, and Frank too. Harry Billings took us all out."
"I'm afraid that the children will become something of a nuisance down at the boat-house. Of course with you it is different; but the others hang around and look wishful, and of course the young men are too good-natured not to ask them. As for Frankie, he is such an amphibious little animal, we can't help his living down there."
"I only wish we all did live on the shore," grumbled Mildred. "I never shall be resigned to being so far from the lake."
"Oh, it is something to live in the country," rejoined Clover comfortingly, "and Hyde Park is pretty all through."
"Country! Hyde Park!" said Mildred scornfully. "You know it is all Chicago now."
"To be sure; but the annexation is a novelty yet, so no wonder I had forgotten. However, what's in a name?"
"Not much, perhaps," said Mildred, tired of reaching up in the hot sun, and inclined to be pessimistic, "but since we have moved into the middle of this dingy old block, we had better stop talking about living in the country. You haven't told me yet why you took this last caprice. We can't afford to go away and have a change in summer, I understand that; but surely there is a difference between stark and staring mad. There are more sensible forms of recreation than to do a family washing on an August day."
"I haven't done the biggest, hardest pieces, you see," said Clover gently. "There, this is the last. Now let us go over under our tree and talk a bit while we cool off." She turned toward the house and sent a reassuring kiss toward the figure seated in the window, and made a dumb show of applauding her own performance, smiling gayly as she clapped her hands.
"Sit down, Milly," she said, when they had reached the shade of the one tree their yard boasted; but as soon as they were seated, the elder girl fell silent, and clasping her hands behind her head looked up through the foliage of the ragged oak, slowly dying as all its brothers and sisters do in this region, pining for the old prairie isolation.