"Is there a yard?" asked Miss Billy diplomatically, for Beatrice was flushing angrily under her brother's ridicule. "Yes, there is a large yard," said Mrs. Lee. "The sod is almost worn off, but a little grass seed and care will work wonders there."
"Good!" exclaimed Miss Billy. "Then perhaps, sometime in the dim and misty future I may have a garden of my own. I would be willing to move for that alone."
"And I can raise vegetables and keep chickens," said Theodore.
"And rise at daybreak to plough and harrow, and to feed and water your stock," slyly added Miss Billy.
"Yes, my dear," retorted Theodore with true brotherly inflection, "and without the aid of an alarm clock either. When I hear a combination of an avalanche and an ice wagon going downstairs I shall say to myself: 'Time to get up. There goes Miss Billy.'"
"How about the furniture?" inquired Miss Billy, ignoring her brother's thrust. "It seems to me that what now abundantly fills fourteen rooms will overflow in eight. I have a hazy recollection of a philosophical principle about two objects not being able to occupy the same place at the same time. How shall we manage to get our great-grandmother's colossal bed into an eight by ten bedroom? Can you put allopathic furniture into a homœopathic house, mother mine?"
"That is another thing to be considered," said Mrs. Lee. "Of course we shall not be able to take all of our furniture. I think we must plan to move only what is most necessary——"
"The bath tub and the Bible," interrupted Theodore.
"Yes," said his mother, smiling in spite of herself at the boy's merry way of treating a serious subject. "And the books for your father, and the piano for Beatrice——"
"And the couch for Theodore," suggested Miss Billy.