“We were putting the baby to bed. Oh, goldfish! But Theodore—”
“They’re ours,” Kermit said. “I counted and there are twelve of them. Which is the mother fish, Father, the one who lays the eggs?”
“They aren’t ours,” answered his father. “I got them for the school for you to give the other children as a goodby gift. This house is freezing, Edie, can’t that man do something about the fires?”
“There’s one burning wherever there’s a fireplace, Theodore, and they’ve been stoking both furnaces continually all day. This house is just hard to heat on a windy day.”
“My room is like an icehouse,” said Alice. “My fingers got practically stiff while I was dressing.”
“We’ll hope that the house in Albany is easier to heat,” said Mrs. Roosevelt.
“I don’t want to move to Albany,” Ethel whimpered. “I don’t want to leave my puppies and my pony.”
“Silly!” scorned young Ted, who had stood a little aloof from all the excitement over the goldfish, as he usually did from things he considered childish. “You should be proud to go to Albany, Father’s going to be governor of New York.”
“Is that like being president?” asked Ethel.
“Slightly less than being president,” Ted conceded, “but not much less.”