After dinner that evening, Mr. Lee, who had a key to the recently rented house, drove his interested family around to it. Betty was secretly not particularly sorry to have the new home in the suburb that held the Waite home. She had always liked Marcella very much, even if she were not intimate and had not joined the sorority to which Marcella belonged. Then, to be sure, there was Larry! But Betty did not mention him when Doris on the way was saying that with Chet “so attentive to Betty” it would be better for him if they had taken “that house Mrs. Dorrance wanted us to have.” Doris had seen that.
“I fancy that if Chet wants to see me he will be able to find us,” demurely said Betty to Doris. “And, you know what pretty trees and big yards they have out near Marcella.”
Doris nodded assent and approval began to increase as Mr. Lee drove into a comparatively quiet street and drew up before an attractive place in the middle of the square or block. “We’ll be more peaceful in the center of things,” said he. “Our yard is wide and fairly deep and you see that pretty little wooded ravine at its end? There are some advantages about a city with hills. There is room enough for Amy Lou to slide down hill in winter, though the land does not all belong to this place. It is shared by the various owners.”
It was fascinating to go into the house with its vacant and echoing rooms and halls. It was modern, comparatively new, and with enough bedrooms! Dick said that it would be pretty foxy to have a “real room” of his own instead of the “den.” Doris and Betty could now have separate rooms and Amy Lou was to have a small room perhaps intended only as a dressing room. But she was happy over it. “What shall we do when Amy Lou grows up?” asked Doris, though executing a lively dance with Betty about the empty room that was to be hers.
“I think we need not worry about that,” replied Mr. Lee. “From present indications I should say that if we keep both our older girls till that happens we shall do well.”
“Father!” cried Betty, giving Doris a whirl and stopping the evolutions.
“I think I’d like Betty’s room,” soberly said Amy Lou, “when she marries Ch——”
But Betty had clapped a hand over that pretty and mischievous mouth of her small sister. “Amy Lou, your imagination works overtime!”
Amy Lou struggled, but laughed. “Doris says that the girl Kathryn calls ‘Finny’ and Jack Huxley got engaged this summer. Senior girls do!”
“Not if they have any sense,” said Betty, but her mother shook her head at her. “What, Mother—do you approve? Is the world coming to an end?”