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The Dorrance Domain
The Dorrance Domain
CHAPTER I
COOPED UP
"I wish we didn't have to live in a boarding-house!" said Dorothy Dorrance, flinging herself into an armchair, in her grandmother's room, one May afternoon, about six o'clock.
She made this remark almost every afternoon, about six o'clock, whatever the month or the season, and as a rule, little attention was paid to it. But to-day her sister Lilian responded, in a sympathetic voice,
"I wish we didn't have to live in a boarding-house!"
Whereupon Leicester, Lilian's twin brother, mimicking his sister's tones, dolefully repeated, "I wish we didn't have to live in a boarding-house!"
And then Fairy, the youngest Dorrance, and the last of the quartet, sighed forlornly, "I wish we didn't have to live in a boarding-house!"
There was another occupant of the room. A gentle white-haired old lady, whose sweet face and dainty fragile figure had all the effects of an ivory miniature, or a painting on porcelain.
"My dears," she said, "I'm sure I wish you didn't."
"Don't look like that, grannymother," cried Dorothy, springing to kiss the troubled face of the dear old lady. "I'd live here a million years, rather than have you look so worried about it. And anyway, it wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the dinners."
"I don't mind the dinners," said Leicester, "in fact I would be rather sorry not to have them. What I mind is the cramped space, and the shut-up-in-your-own-room feeling. I spoke a piece in school last week, and I spoke it awful well, too, because I just meant it. It began, 'I want free life, and I want fresh air,' and that's exactly what I do want. I wish we lived in Texas, instead of on Manhattan Island. Texas has a great deal more room to the square yard, and I don't believe people are crowded down there."
"There can't be more room to a square yard in one place than another," said Lilian, who was practical.