"All boys," Carl added briefly.
"Boys? No, indeed! Girls are much nicer, aren't they, Ikey?" and Louise looked at him mischievously over her shoulder.
Ikey's shyness or his politeness, perhaps both, would not allow him to reply.
"They are both nice when they are nice," said Aunt Zélie. "Being a girl myself, of course I like girls, and so does this individual," patting the head against her shoulder.
"Oh, I like some girls!" Carl conceded graciously.
"I wish there would be a little girl for me to play with," remarked Helen plaintively, for it was the trial of her life that she was considered too little to be made a companion of by the other children except on special occasions.
"It is a fortunate thing that the house is to be occupied," said Aunt Zélie, "for Mr. Jackson, the agent, told Frank that it looked as if some one had been camping out in the garden. The grass was trampled down and I don't know what damage done."
If she had not happened to be looking across the street she would have seen some guilty faces. Bess grew red, Louise opened her mouth and shut it again without saying anything, Carl drummed on the back of his chair with an air of extreme indifference which Ikey tried to copy, and Helen looked from one to the other with very big eyes.
The Fords' tea bell, rung at the front door for Ikey's benefit, relieved the strain. Then presently Louise saw her father and baby Carie coming up the street, and the Brown house was not mentioned again.
As Aunt Zélie was on her way upstairs that night she was waylaid in the dimly lighted hall by three ghostly figures.