"All is," she said, "will those Downings do as well when there are no other girls to make them think the work is play?"
"Oh!" answered grandmamma, "I never trouble my head about what folks will do in the future. I have enough to do looking after what they do in the present. Alice here gets along very well all by herself a great part of the time. By-the-way, child, did Aunt Hetty give thee mother's letter?"
I rushed off to get my treasure. It would soon be the blessed day when I might expect a letter telling me when my father and mother would be at home again.
CHAPTER V.
A LITTLE OF EVERYTHING.
Just as I began to be a wee little bit tired of housework, and to feel that I would like nothing so much as a day with my birds, my fancy-work, and a charming story-book, what should happen but that grandmamma's headache and Aunt Hetty's "misery in her bones" should both come at once.
Tap, tap, tap on the floor above my head in the early dawn came grandmamma's ebony stick.
Veva Fay and Marjorie Downing were both spending the night with me. Veva had slept on the wide, old-fashioned lounge in the corner, and Marjorie in the broad couch with me, and we had all talked till it was very late, as girls always do when they sleep in one room, unless, of course, they are sisters, or at school, and used to it.