“Are you going to stay here with us, Don, really?” said Cricket interestedly.
“Yes, Miss Scricket, I am. Any objections? That is, in my cell next door. And as we are jointly quarantined from the rest of the family, I foresee we’ll have some high old times. Oh, how they’ll wish they had the mumps!”
“Poor boy!” said Mrs. Ward, sympathetically. “What a nuisance for you!”
For a week the mumps held high carnival at the Ward’s. Imagine, if you can, the effect of all those swollen faces in a group. If Eunice and Cricket looked funny, they were nothing to lordly Donald, whose face was extended to the funniest possible proportions, for he had the affliction only on one side.
“We’ve a regular fat man’s picnic,” said Cricket the day that Zaidie joined the up-stairs party. For by the usual law of contraries, Zaidie, who was always strong and well, succumbed after two days, and delicate little Helen, as well as Kenneth, entirely escaped.
After Zaidie was promoted to the third floor, the original occupants had all the delights of a bear-garden. It was fortunate for her long-suffering family that Zaidie was seldom ill, for she was the hardest possible child to take care of when she was. When she was well, she was sunny-tempered, like the rest. She was harder now than she would have been otherwise, for really the poor little thing was dismally homesick for her little twin, her other self, from whom she had scarcely ever been separated an hour in her life.
After two days of Zaidie’s confinement up-stairs, Eunice and Cricket were in such a state of exasperation and excitement over the poor little thing’s constant wailing and fretting for Helen, her refusing to be comforted or amused, that it was plain she must have a room to herself. Marjorie was detailed to look after her especially.
Marjorie, it fortunately chanced, had had the mumps when she was small. Moreover, Zaidie was passionately attached to this eldest sister of hers. When the little twins were born, Marjorie, aged nine, had eagerly begged that, since mamma had two babies now, she might have one of these to “call hers.” Mamma let her choose, and her selection instantly fell upon the big, black-eyed baby, which appealed to her childish heart much more than the tiny, violet-eyed one, that was so delicate that for a year it was scarcely out of its mother’s or its nurse’s arms.
Marjorie had always petted Zaidie after that, and made much of her and called her “her baby,” and the strong-willed little maid obeyed Marjorie better than any one but her father and mother. Marjorie delighted in her, because she was such a fine, noble-looking child, with her erect, firmly-knit little figure, her short, silky black hair, her great, dark eyes, and peachy complexion. She loved to take her to walk, for strangers would turn and look after her, or perhaps stop and ask whose child she was.
Helen, with her dainty beauty, her fluffy golden hair, and tiny figure, was not nearly so striking-looking, though, after all, her caressing, lovable little ways made her rather the family pet and baby, even more than Kenneth, with his sturdy boy-ways. It is very apt to be the case, however, in a large family, that each one of the older ones takes a younger one under his or her special charge. Thus, as Marjorie had adopted Zaidie, Eunice laid claim to Helen as her baby. In this same way, Cricket felt that Kenneth was her particular property.