Laughing Last

"I beg your pardon, but it's my turn to have the Egg!"

Three pairs of eyes swept to the sunny window seat from which vantage-ground Sidney Romley had thrown her protest. Three mouths gaped.

"Yours-"

"Why, Sid-"

"Fifteen-year-olders don't have turns!" laughed Victoria Romley, who was nineteen and very grown up.

Though inwardly Sidney writhed, outwardly she maintained a calm firmness. The better to impress her point she uncurled herself from the cushions and straightened to her fullest height.

"It's because I am fifteen that I am claiming my rights," she answered, carefully ignoring Vicky's laughing eyes. "Each one of you has had the Egg twice and I've never had a cent of it-"

"Sid, you forget I bought a rug when it was my last turn and you enjoy that as much as I do," broke in her oldest sister.

Sidney waved her hand impatiently. She had rehearsed this scene in the privacy of her attic retreat and she could not be deflected by mention of rugs and things. She must keep to the heart of the issue.

"It's the principle of the thing," she continued, loftily. "We're always fair with one another and give and take and all that, and I think it'd be a blot on our honor if you refused me my lawful turn at the Egg. I'm willing to overlook each one of you having it twice."

"That's kind of you. What would you do with it, anyway, kid?" interrupted Vicky, quite unimpressed by her sister's seriousness. She let a chuckle in her voice denote how amused she was.

Sidney flashed a withering look in Vicky's direction.

"I wouldn't spend it all on one party that's over in a minute and nothing to show for it!" she retorted. Then: "And what I'd do with it is my own affair!" She swallowed to control a sob that rose in her throat.

"Tut! Tut!" breathed the tormenting Vicky.

"Why, Sid, dear!" cried Trude, astonished. She put a tray of dishes that she was carrying to the kitchen down upon the old sideboard and turned to face Sid. At the tone of her voice Sidney flew to her and flung her arms about her.

"I don't care-I don't care! You can laugh at me but I'm sick of being different. I-I want to do things like-other girls do. H-have fun-"

Over her head Trude's eyes implored the others to be gentle. She herself was greatly disturbed. Even Vicky grew sober. In a twinkling this lanky, pigtailed little sister seemed to have become an individual with whom they must reckon. They had never suspected but that she was as contented with her happy-go-lucky way as any petted kitten.

Isolde, the oldest sister, frowned perplexedly.

"Sidney, stop crying and tell us what you want. As far as fun is concerned I don't think you have any complaint. Certainly you do not have anything to worry about!" Isolde's tone conveyed that she did.

"If it's just the Egg that's bothering you, why, take it!" cried Vicky, magnanimously.

Only Trude sensed that the cause of Sidney's rebellion lay deeper than any desire for fun. She was not unaware of certain dissatisfactions that smoldered in her own breast. The knowledge of them helped her to understand Sidney's mood. She patted the girl's head sympathetically.

"I guess we haven't realized you're growing up, Sid," she laughed softly. "Now brace up and tell us what's wrong with everything."

Trude's quiet words poured balm on Sidney's soul. At last-at last these three sisters realized she was fifteen. It hadn't been the Egg itself she had wanted-it had been to have them reckon her in on their absurd family cogitations. She drew the sleeve of her blouse across her eyes and faced them.

"I want to go somewhere, to live somewhere where I won't be Joseph Romley's daughter! I want to wear clothes like the other girls and go to a boarding school and never set eyes on a book of poetry. I want adventure and to do exciting things. I want-"

Isolde stemmed the outpour with a shocked rebuke.

"Sid, I don't think you realize how disrespectful what you are saying is to our father's memory! He has left us something that is far greater than wealth. A great many girls would gladly change places with you and enjoy being the daughter of a poet-"

"Oh, tush!" Quite unexpectedly Sidney found an ally in Vicky. "Issy, you've acted your part so often, poor dear, that you really think we are blessed by the gods in having been born to a poet. And poor as church mice! I wish someone would change places with me long enough for me to eat a few meals without hearing you and Trude talk about how much flour costs and how we're going to pay the milk bill. Yes, a fine heritage! Poor Dad, he couldn't help being a poet, but I'll bet he wishes now he'd been a plasterer or something like that-for our sakes, of course. I'm not kicking, I'm as game as you are, and I'm willing to carry on about Dad's memory and all that-it's the least we can do in return for what the League's done for us, but just among ourselves we might enjoy the emotion of sighing for the things other girls do and have, mightn't we?"

Sidney had certainly started something! The very atmosphere of the familiar room in which they were assembled seemed charged with strange currents. Never had any family council taken such a tone. Sidney thrilled to the knowledge that she was now a vital part of it. Her eyes, so recently wet, brightened and her cheeks flushed. So interested was she in what Issy would answer to Vick that she ignored the opening Vick had made for her.

But it was Trude who answered Vicky-Trude, the peaceful.

"Come! Come! First thing we know we'll actually be feeling sorry for ourselves! I sometimes get awfully tired living up to Dad's greatness, but I don't think that's being disrespectful to his memory. I don't suppose there are any girls, even rich ones, who don't sigh for something they haven't. But just to stiffen our spines let's sum up our assets. We're not quite as poor as church mice; we have this old house that isn't half bad, even if the roof does leak, and the government bonds and the royalties and living the way we had to live with Dad taught us to have fun among ourselves which is something! We're not dependent upon outsiders for that. You, Issy, have your personality which will get you anywhere you want to go. And Vick's better dressed on nothing than any girl in Middletown. We older girls do have a little more than Sid, so I vote she has the Egg this time all to herself to do exactly as she pleases with it-go 'round the world in search of adventure or any old thing. How's that, family?"

The tension that had held the little circle broke under Trude's practical cheeriness. Isolde smiled. Vick liked being told she looked well-dressed, she worked hard enough to merit that distinction. Sid had the promise of the Egg, which, be it known, was the royalty accruing each year from a collection of whimsical verse entitled "Goosefeathers" and which these absurd daughters of a great but improvident man set aside from the other royalties to be spent prodigally by each in turn.

"I'm quite willing," Isolde conceded. "I was going to suggest that we agree to use it this time to fix the roof where it leaks but if Sid's heart is set on it-"

"It would have been my turn-that is not counting Sid," Vick reminded them, "and I'd have used it having that fur coat Godmother Jocelyn sent me made over. But let the roof leak and the coat go-little Sid must have her fling! I hope you're happy now, kid. What will you really do with all that money?"

At no time had Sidney definitely considered such a question. Her point won she found herself embarrassed by victory. She evaded a direct answer.

"I won't tell, now!"

"Oh-ho, mysterious! Well, there won't be so much that you'll hurt yourself in your youthful extravagance. Now that this momentous affaire de famille is settled, what are you girls going to do this morning?"

"As soon as these dishes are out of the way I'm going to trim that vine on the front wall. It's disgustingly scraggly."

"Oh, Trude-you can't! You forget-it's Saturday!"

Trude groaned. Vicky laughed naughtily. Saturday-that was the day of the week which the Middletown Branch of the League of American Poets kept for the privilege of taking visitors to the home of Joseph Romley, the poet. In a little while they would begin to come, in twos and threes and larger groups. First they'd stand outside and look at the old house from every angle. They would say to the strangers who were visiting the shrine for the first time: "No, the house wasn't in his family but Joseph Romley made it peculiarly his; it's as though his ancestors had lived there for generations-nothing has been changed-that west room with the bay window was his study-yes, his desk is there and his pencils and pens-just as he left them-even his old house jacket-of course we can go in-our League paid off the mortgage as a memorial and we have Saturday as a visiting day-there are four girls, most interesting types, but Isolde, the oldest, is the only one of them who is at all like the great poet-"

They would come in slowly, reverently. Isolde, in a straight smock of some vivid color, with a fillet about the cloudy hair that framed her thin face like a curtain, would meet them at the door of the study. She would shake hands with them and answer their awkward questions in her slow drawl which always ended in a minor note. They would look at Isolde much more closely than at the desk and the pens and pencils and the old swivel chair and the faded cushion. On their way out they'd peep inquisitively into the front room with its long windows, bared to the light and the floor looking dustier for the new rug, and the two faded, deep chairs near the old piano. They would see the dust and the bareness but they wouldn't know how gloriously, at sunset time, the flame of the sky lighted every corner of the spacious room or what jolly fires could crackle on the deep hearth or what fun it was to cuddle in the old chairs-they could hold four-while Vicky's clever fingers raced over the cracked ivory keys in her improvisations that sometimes set them roaring with laughter and sometimes brought mist to their eyes. The intruders would find some way to look into the dining room which for the girls was living room and sewing room, too, and they'd say: "How quaint everything is! These old houses have so much atmosphere;" when in their hearts they'd be thinking about the shabbiness of everything and they'd be rejoicing that their fathers and husbands were not poets! Vicky claimed to have heard one sacrilegious young creature, plainly on a honeymoon, exclaim: "I'm glad I'm not a poet's daughter and have to live in that old sepulcher! Give me obscurity in a steam-heated three bathroom apartment, any day!"

Of course there could be no trimming the vines and Trude's fingers itched for the task-not so much that she minded the unkempt growth as that she longed to be active out-of-doors. She had planned to plant another row of beans, too. The girls wouldn't poke fun at her when they ate fresh vegetables right out of a garden all of their own! But the ladies of the League must not find her, earth-stained and disheveled, in the garden on Saturday!

"I'll have to change my dress. I forgot it was Saturday when I put this old thing on."

"Vick, dear, you haven't taken your sketching things from Dad's desk," admonished Isolde a little frightenedly and Vicky jumped with a low whistle. "Good gracious! What if a High Lady Leaguer found my truck on that sacred shrine!" She rushed off to the study.

Trude having gone kitchenward with her dishes, Isolde and Sidney faced one another. Sidney grew awkwardly aware of a constraint in her sister's manner. She was regarding her with a curious hardness in her grave eyes.

"You said you were sick of being different!" Isolde made Sidney's words sound childish. "Well-I don't know just how you can escape it-any more than the rest of us can. Look at me-look at Trude-" Then she shut her lips abruptly over what she had started to say. "What had you planned to do this morning, Sid?"

"I told Nancy Stevens I'd go swimming with her though I don't much care whether I go or not."

"Well-as long as you have claimed a share in our little scheme of life, kitten-perhaps you'd better receive the League visitors this morning. I have some letters to write and I want to dye that old silk. Don't forget to enter the date in the register!"

With which astounding command Isolde walked slowly out of the room leaving Sidney with a baffled sense of-in spite of the promise of the Egg-having been robbed of something.