“Don’t tire us with conundrums, Bonny!” pleaded Isabelle, who had made a swift tour of the whole premises and now returned to the empty little glass house where the rest had gathered.
“By having their breakfast at seven o’clock the year round!”
“Then during the week you have passed with them you have either suffered or been impolite!” said Mrs. Beckwith, with conviction.
“I wasn’t impolite, Motherkin. I didn’t keep them waiting,—they wouldn’t have waited, though,—but I was on hand every morning, sharp. So was Roland. Oh! that youth is a changed young man! If it only lasts!”
“Now, here,” said Roland, paying no attention to Bonny’s banter, “is where I have sowed my celery seed. Here is lettuce; there radishes; there onions, tomatoes, and by this side a few early potatoes. Isn’t that like living?”
“Roland, how did you know what to do? And how have you had time to accomplish so much since you came? Shall you like it?”
“Mother, you are almost as curious as Bob! It does me good to hear it. I was taught what to do by Mr. Brook’s gardener. And we have not wasted any of the hours during this past week, anyway. And I shall like it—immensely. I never felt so much a man in all my life.”
“Why, you ain’t a man, Roland! You’re only a boy,” remarked Robert, feeling a bit jealous of this big brother who had had a whole week at the Lindens, while he had been forced to remain in a city boarding-house till Beatrice and the “Laureate” prepared the home for their mother’s coming. “And don’t it look funny to see our old things in this new house! I found my own bed the first thing. It’s in a room all by my own self, ’cause Bon said so. That bed is new if nothin’ else ain’t, an’ I’m as much ’count as you if I can have a bedroom too.”
“I think that is one of the luxuries of the situation, that each member of the household can have his or her own little apartment to do in just as he pleases.”
“To do in not at all as he pleases, you mean! That girl has fidgeted herself sick lest there should be a speck of dirt left anywhere for your eyes to find, Mother. And if I laid a single thing down in my room—so-called—she’d pounce upon it and hang it up or hide it away, lest the place should ‘look like fury.’”