“Where is Isolde?” Mrs. Milliken whispered between her “Note the gracious proportions of this hall” and “Joseph Romley would never allow himself to be crowded with possessions.”

“She’s—she’s—” Sidney had a sudden instinct to protect Isolde. “She has—a headache.”

“I am so sorry that I cannot introduce you to Isolde Romley—the poet’s oldest daughter,” Mrs. Milliken pitched her voice so that it might reach even to the girls crowding into the front door. “She is a most interesting and delightful and unusual young lady. She was always closely associated with her gifted father and we feel that she is growing to be very like him. This—” smiling affectionately at Sidney and allowing a suggestion of apology to creep into her tone, “This is just our little Sidney, the poet’s baby-girl. Sidney, lamb, this is Miss Byers of Grace Hall, a boarding school for young ladies and these are her precious charges. They are making a pilgrimage to our beloved shrine—” Sidney, too familiar with Mrs. Milliken’s flowery phrases to be embarrassed by them, faced a little frightenedly the eyes that stared curiously at her from above the spotless collars.

“We will go right into the study,” Mrs. Milliken advised Miss Byers. “We can take the girls in in little groups. As poor Isolde is not here I will tell them some of the precious and personal anecdotes of the great poet. You know we, in Middletown—especially of the League—feel very privileged to have lived so close to him—”

Miss Byers briskly marshalled the first eight girls into the small study. The others broke file and crowded into the front room and on to the stairs, some even spilled over into the dining room. They paid not the slightest attention to anything about them. Assured that Miss Byers was out of hearing they burst into excited chatter and laughter. Except for one or two who smiled shyly at her they did not even notice Sidney.

Sidney, relieved that Mrs. Milliken did not expect her to recite the “precious and personal anecdotes,” drew back into a corner from where she could enjoy to its fullest measure the delight of such close propinquity to real boarding-school girls. Their talk, broken by smothered shrieks of laughter, rang like sweetest music to her. They seemed so jolly. Their blue serges and white collars were so stylish. She wondered where they all came from and whether they had “scrapes” at Grace Hall.

The first eight girls filed back into the hall from the study and Miss Byers motioned eight more to enter. There was a general stirring, then the chatter swelled again. Presently a girl slipped into Sidney’s corner and dropped down upon a chair.

“Isn’t this the stupidest bore!” she groaned. Then looking at Sidney, she gasped and laughed. “Say—I beg your pardon. I thought you were one of the girls. And you’re—you’re—the poet’s daughter, aren’t you?” The slanting dove-gray eyes above the white collar actually softened with sympathy.

Sidney thought this young creature the very prettiest girl—next to Vicky—she had ever seen. She did not mind her pity. The stranger had taken her for “one of the girls” and Sidney would have forgiven her anything for that!

“I suppose it is a bore. Isn’t it fun, though, just going places?”

The boarding school girl stared. “Oh, we go so much. There isn’t a big gun anywhere within a radius of five hundred miles that we don’t have to visit. We get autographs and listen to speeches and make notes about graves and look at pictures. Most of the girls get a kick out of it slipping in some gore behind Byers’ back—but I don’t. I travel so much with my family that nothing seems awfully exciting now.”

Sidney wished she’d say that over again—it sounded so unbelievable. And the girl couldn’t be any older than she was. She was conscious that the slanting eyes were regarding her closely.

“Do you like living here and having a lot of people tramp all over your house and stare at you and say things about you and poke at your father’s things?”

It was plain magic the way this stranger put her finger directly upon the sore spot.

“No, I don’t!” vehemently.

“I’d hate it, too. And I suppose you always have to act like a poet’s daughter, don’t you? Do you have to write poetry yourself?”

“No, I loathe poetry!”

“But I’ll bet you don’t dare say so when that Dame in there can hear you! I have to be careful talking about candy. My father makes the Betty Sweets. Don’t you know them? They’re sold all over the world. We have an immense factory. And there isn’t any other kind of candy that I don’t like better. But I don’t dare tell anybody that. Funny, I’m telling you! Our spirits must be drawn together by some invisible bond.”

Sidney’s ears fairly ached with the beauty of the other’s words. She stiffened her slender little body to control its trembling. She tried to say something but found her throat choked. The other girl rattled on:

“I didn’t take any notes. I’ll copy my roommate’s. You see we have to write a theme about our visit. Miss Byers prides herself on the girls of Grace being so well-informed. I know. I’ll put you into it. That’ll be fun. Only you’ll have to tell me something about yourself. How old are you? Do you go to a regular school and play with other girls like any ordinary girl?”

Sidney flushed at the other’s manner and found her tongue in an instinctive desire to defend her lot.

“Of course I go to school. It’s sort of a boarding school, only all the girls go home nights. And I do everything the others do. And I am fifteen.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you. I thought perhaps a poet’s daughter was different. If you don’t mind in my theme I’ll make you different—pale and thin, with curly hair in a cloud, and faraway eyes—”

“That’s like Isolde, my oldest sister, the one who usually tells the ‘precious and personal anecdotes.’ I wasn’t really offended—and I’ll admit most of the girls do treat me a little bit differently—but that’s Miss Downs’ fault; she won’t let them forget that I am Joseph Romley’s daughter. She uses it all the time in her catalogue and when any visitors come to the school it’s dreadful—”

“If you don’t like it why don’t you come to Grace Hall? We’d have no end of fun—”

“Gracious, I’ve never been anywhere. I only go to Miss Downs’ because it’s here at Middletown and because she gives me my tuition on account of Dad—” Sidney bit off her words in a sudden panic lest her admission of poverty shock this lovely creature. It had not, however. The dove-gray eyes had softened again with pity.

“Oh, I see. Of course, poets are always poor. I supposed they usually lived in garrets. I nearly flopped when I saw this big house!” This to comfort Sidney. “Well, it’s too bad you can’t go to Grace. I like the riding best. I have my own horse. Gypsy. She’s a darling. My roommate is the cutest thing. She’s captain of the hockey team and her picture was in the New York Times. Her mother made a dreadful fuss about it but it was too late. And she got a letter from a boy in New York who’d seen the picture—the most exciting letter—”

“Oh, here you are, Pola,” cried a voice behind them and a tall girl elbowed Sidney back into her corner. “Say, Byers will be here at least a half an hour longer. We’ll have time for a dope at that store we passed, if we hurry!”

All boredom vanished, the girl Pola sprang to her feet. She paused only long enough to hold out her hand to Sidney. “Don’t tell anyone that I don’t like Betty Sweets best of all the candy in the world, will you?” she laughed. “And I won’t tell anyone that you loathe poetry.” Then she ran after the tall girl. Sidney felt engulfed in a great and terrible loneliness.

For the next half hour she was only conscious of a fear that Pola and her companion might not get back before Miss Byers discovered their flight. But just as the last eight came out of the study and Miss Byers was lingering for a few words with Mrs. Milliken, Sidney saw two flying figures join the others at the gate. Her little hope that she might have a chance to talk again with Pola or hear her talk was lost in a surge of relief that she was quite safe.

Mrs. Milliken remained after the others had filed down the street. Sidney, troubled by her fib of the headache, wished with all her soul that she would go and strained her ears for any sound from the floor above that might betray Isolde’s activities.

“A lovely thing—to bring those young girls to this spot,” Mrs. Milliken was murmuring as she looked over the register which the League kept very carefully. “Here are some well-known names. Jenkins—probably that’s the iron family. Scott—I wonder if that’s the Scott who’s related to the Astors.” Sidney watched the gloved finger as it traced its way down the page of scrawled signatures.

“Is there a Pola Somebody there?” she asked, hopefully. Mrs. Milliken’s finger ran back up the page.

“No—not that I can find. The girls were very careless—not half of them registered.”

Of course Pola wouldn’t have registered—she had been too bored.

Her survey finished, Mrs. Milliken put the register in its place and regarded Sidney with contemplative eyes.

“Another time, dear lamb, if you receive, tell Isolde to—well, fix you up a little. I must speak to the Committee and plan something suitable for you. Perhaps we have been forgetting that our dear little girl is growing out of her rompers. Oh—and another thing, tell Isolde I was shocked to smell gasoline on your gifted father’s jacket—”

“Trude thought it had moths in it and she soaked it in gasoline,” explained Sidney uncomfortably.

“Oh, she mustn’t do it again. It—it spoiled the atmosphere of everything! I will speak to the dear girls. Give my love to Isolde and tell her to rest. I do not think anyone else will come today for I posted a notice at the clubrooms reserving this date for Grace School.”

With an affectionate leave-taking of her “lamb” Mrs. Milliken rustled off. Sidney slowly shut the door. Out there, beyond the hedge, went Pola and the other laughing girls of Grace Hall, out into a world of fun and adventure. And inside the door—

Pola had dared race off to the corner drug store; Sidney felt certain Pola would dare anything. And she had not even had spunk enough to speak up and tell interfering Mrs. Milliken that Trude and the rest of them would soak everything in gasoline, if they wanted to! Most certainly they were not going to let moths eat them all up alive!

Oh—oh, it was hateful! And Isolde had said they could not escape it; well, she’d find a way!

From abovestairs the three older sisters had witnessed the invasion of their home by the Grace Hall girls.

“It’s perfectly disgusting!” had been Vick’s comment.

Trude was all sympathy for Sidney. “You were cruel, Issy, making Sid receive that mob.”

Isolde reluctantly turned her attention from the faded silks in her lap.

“Sidney might as well realize with what we have to put up. Then perhaps she will not be so discontented with her own easy lot—”

From where she squatted on the floor, a huge mending basket balanced on her knees, Trude regarded Isolde with troubled eyes. Her forehead puckered with little criss-cross wrinkles. Of the three older girls Trude had the least claim to beauty; from constant exposure her skin had acquired a ruddiness like a boy’s which made her blue eyes paler by contrast; her hair had been cut after an attack of scarlet fever and had grown in so slowly that she wore it shingle-bobbed which added to the suggestion of boyishness about her; there was an ungirlish sturdiness and squareness to her build—one instinctively looked to her shoulders to carry burdens. Yet withal there was about her a lovableness infinitely more winning than Vick’s Grecian beauty or Isolde’s interesting personality—a lovableness and a loyalty that urged her on now to champion poor Sidney and yet made it the harder for her to express to the others what she felt deep in her heart.

“Stop a minute and think, Issy. Didn’t we used to feel discontented lots of times and fuss about things between ourselves? We knew—though we didn’t exactly ever say it—that we had to be different, on account of Dad. We couldn’t ever bother him, for fear we’d spoil his work. Of course it was all worth while and doesn’t make much difference—now, but, Issy, Sid doesn’t have to put up with what we did—” Trude stopped suddenly. It seemed dreadful to say: “Dad isn’t writing any poems now.” She felt the pang of loss in her tender heart that always came when she thought of her father, with his bursts of impatience and his twitching nose and his long hours in the study with the door closed, and then his great indulgence and boyish demonstrativeness when some work that had been tormenting was completed and off or when some unexpected acceptance came with an accompanying check. She blinked back some tears. “You know I wouldn’t talk like this to anyone outside of us, but, just among us—I wish we could let Sidney do the things we didn’t do when we were her age.”

“Trude, I have never heard you talk so foolishly. I’m sure our lot isn’t so tragic that Sid can’t share it. She has nice friends and goes to Miss Downs and hasn’t a responsibility in the world—”

“Sometimes we get tired of the brand of our best friends and want a change—even yearn for responsibility!”

“I’d say we’d spoiled her enough—she doesn’t need any more.”

“Isolde, you simply don’t want to understand me! Goodness knows I preach contentment the loudest—but— Are we going to live like this all our lives? Look at us, huddled up here, now, because the Saturdays belong to the League. Issy, you and I can go on because we got broken in to it years ago. Vick won’t, of course—” (flashing a smile at the disinterested Victoria) “but little Sid—She’s fifteen now. She has two more years at Miss Downs’. She may want college—or—or something—different——”

Isolde lifted her shoulders with an impatient shrug. Isolde’s thin shoulders were very expressive and had a way of communicating her thoughts more effectively than mere words. They silenced Trude, now.

“Do you think it’s a kindness to encourage Sid to want things that we simply can’t afford to give her? You ought to know that we can’t live a bit differently—you keep our accounts.”

Trude groaned. In any argument they always came back to that; their poverty was like the old wall outside that closed them around. If poor little Sid dreamed dreams it would be as it had been with her. Isolde was quite right—it might be no kindness to the child to let her want things—like college. Yet, though silenced, Trude was not satisfied; there were surely things one could want that could surmount even the ugly wall of poverty.

Vick broke into the pause.

“While we’re considering Sid, what are we going to do with her this summer? If she’s going to have fits like she had this morning it’ll be pleasant having her round with nothing to do. Of course if Godmother Jocelyn makes good on her promise to take me to Banff I won’t have to worry but—”

“Trude, have you written to Huldah asking her if she can come for July and August? Prof. Deering wrote last week suggesting that I spend the summer with them in their cottage on Lake Michigan. I can more than pay my board by helping Professor Deering with his book and that will relieve Mrs. Deering so that she can play with the children. It will be a change for me—”

“Some change, I’d say,” laughed Vicky. “A crabby professor and an overworked wife and two crying babies—”

“Professor Deering isn’t crabbed at all, Vick; he’s a dear and the babies are adorable and Mrs. Deering wrote that the bungalow is right on the water and that she’s going to reduce the housework to almost nothing.”

“It would be nice, Isolde. Why hadn’t you told us of the plan? I had better postpone going to New York. Aunt Edith White will invite me some other time.”

“You mustn’t do anything of the sort,” remonstrated Isolde quickly. “If you do I’ll write to Mrs. Deering and tell her I cannot come. You didn’t go to New York at Easter when Aunt Edith White invited you and she may think you don’t like to go.”

“It seems terribly selfish for us to go away and leave Sid with Huldah in this lonely old house.”

“She adores Huldah and she has her chums—”

“And she’ll have the Egg to spend—” from Vick.

“But there’s such a sameness. And the League brings so many more people—”

“Trude, you’re positively silly about Sid. When we were fifteen—”

“Just the same, I don’t want to be the one to tell her the three of us are going away to have a good time and leave her here with Huldah all summer—”

“I’ll tell her,” declared Isolde, firmly. “And I’ll try to make her understand she is very well off. Sidney really owes more to the League than the rest of us do for we could take care of ourselves. I think we ought to make her appreciate that fact. Vick, look out, quick! Did I hear Mrs. Milliken saying goodby?”

“Yes, there she goes!” cried Vick, now boldly at the window. “What luck to be free so early. Let’s see how much is left of poor old Sid.”

But Vick, opening the door, saw a very straight, pigtailed figure walk resolutely down the long hall toward the attic stairs. Her quick “Well, kid, how did it go?” fell upon deaf ears, nor did Sidney so much as glance in her direction.