This busy household of children had each her appointed tasks and even baby Penelope was supposed to be useful.
"I've got to finish a waltz I was composing; I can't do anything till that's done," said Laura. It was not a little trying to find Laura's genius in the way of her fair share of commonplace tasks, but Margery and Happie were used to it, and when Laura would not, why, Laura would not, and there was less than no use in trying to make her see justice.
"I'll sweep one room, while you dust it, and you can sweep the next one, and I'll dust it; that's fair," said Margery watching Laura depart piano-ward with her troubled look of elder-sisterly responsibility, wishing that she could coax Laura into playing fair.
"And begin in mother's," added Happie, tying up her head so tight that her eyebrows mounted a quarter of an inch, the left higher than the right.
Margery's broom flew, and Happie dusted briskly the chairs set out in the parlor; it was something like the old-fashioned game of solitaire with marbles to clean in the Patty-Pan; one had to move pieces about many times before they could be restored to their appointed place. Dorée considered cleaning done solely for his entertainment, and flew after Happie's duster till she and Polly and Penny were in a gale of a frolic with him, and Margery had to come out to hug the little cat, who looked like a dandelion in a high wind, as he raced over the floor.
The two active housewives worked their way into the third little bedroom rapidly, leaving the first two of the Patty-Pan chambers guiltless of dust. Laura tired of her waltz at last, and consented to go out to do the errands for the day, taking pains with her toilet, though her calls were to be limited to the grocer, the butcher and the German delicatessen shop, to fill out Margery's neat list of necessities.
"Wonder where Penny is!" Polly called to the older girls after Laura had been gone ten minutes, and the silence of the Patty-Pans had been broken only by the lively broom and duster.
"Laura didn't take her," Margery called back. "I saw her start alone. She's in there, isn't she?"
"Not one bit," cried Polly, as if her little sister were made up of fragments.
"Why, how queer!" Happie said, emerging from Bob's room with dangling duster. "She couldn't have gone out."