"We will discuss my costume or lack of it later," she returned, holding her short flannel dressing sacque together and laughing over her shoulder where one long blond plait hung neatly braided, the rest of her hair falling loose. "Methinks that was Horace Virgil Everett trying to break up the furniture somewhere! Was there ever such an infant born into this suffering world? I simply never turn my back without his getting into fresh trouble."
While she was talking she was also running downstairs, followed in a more leisurely manner by her brother. Both of them glanced into the empty library and untidy dining-room as they passed and finally arrived in a dark passageway at the end of the back stairs.
A small object lay on the floor with its arms and legs outspread, showing not the slightest inclination to pick itself up, and on Meg's bending over it the wails broke out afresh.
"Oh, do shut up, 'Bumps'," Jack Everett said good-naturedly. "You haven't killed yourself and you're much too big for Meg to carry."
But the small boy clung desperately to his sister, his fat arms about her neck and his legs about her waist until with difficulty she was able to get him upstairs and into her own room.
He was probably about three feet high and almost as broad, between three and four years old, with brown hair that would stand up in a pompadour simply because it was too stiff to lie down, a perfectly insignificant nose, a Cupid's bow of a mouth and two large grave blue eyes, as innocent of mischief as any lamb's.
At the present moment, however, his eyes were simply raining tears, as though they had their source in a cloudburst, and over one of them a bump appeared as large as an egg. Indeed, Horace Virgil, named for his Professor father's favorite Latin poets, had been rechristened 'Bumps' by his older brother and was more commonly known by that title.
Meg kept glancing at the clock as she dampened her small brother's forehead with witch hazel. "I am afraid I can't go," she said in a disappointed tone, "and I am dreadfully sorry because I promised. But if I leave Horace with the servants now he will howl himself ill. I don't suppose you were going to stay in for a few hours. Oh, of course not!" she concluded, seeing that her older brother was wearing his khaki service uniform and held a big, broad-brimmed hat in his hand. "Heigh-ho, don't I wish I were a boy," she sighed whimsically, turning at last toward her mirror, decorated with college flags, and beginning to braid the second half of her hair.
John Everett, frowned and fidgeted. "I am sorry, Meg," he replied after a moment. "I would stay at home, only there is a meeting of my brigade and when a fellow belongs to a thing why he owes it some of his time. I don't see why you have to stay at home so much. Of course it is a good deal for a girl to have to look after, a house and father and the kid and me, but you have two maids and if you only were a better manager. Why you don't seem even to take time to dress like other girls, you are always kind of flying apart with a button off your waist or the braid torn on your skirt, and I do love a spick and span girl. Why don't you look like Betty Ashton, she's always up to the limit?"
Margaret Everett coiled her yellow plaits about her head, keeping her back turned to hide the trembling of her lips until she was able to answer cheerfully. "Why yes, I should like to look like 'The Princess' and wear clothes like she does, but in the first place I am not so good looking as Betty, I haven't a maid to see after my clothes and fifty dollars a month to dress on--and I haven't a mother."