"Carroll is always trying to make me an' Buddy mind him; but we won't," observed Doris, emphatically kicking her overshoes across the floor.
"All three of you should obey mother every time," chanted Elizabeth in the weary tone of an oft-repeated admonition. She sighed as she added, "It is very naughty to argue and dispute."
"But you see, mother, I'm the oldest," began Carroll argumentatively, "an' I generally know what the children ought to do just as well as anybody."
He hung up his hat and coat and set his overshoes primly side by side with a rebuking glance at his small sister, who tossed her mane of hair at him disdainfully.
"I see you've forgotten what mother said about overshoes, Doris," he whispered with an air of superior merit which appeared to exasperate the little girl beyond endurance. She leaned forward suddenly and a piercing squeal from the boy announced the fact that virtue frequently reaps an unexpected reward.
"Doris pinched my ear hard, mother," he explained, winking fast to keep back the unmanly tears. "I didn't even touch her."
Elizabeth looked up from kissing and cuddling her baby. "Oh, Doris dear; how could you! Don't you love your little brother?"
The little girl flattened herself against the newel-post, her brown eyes full of warm, dancing lights. "Sometimes I do, mother," she said, with an air of engaging candour; "an' sometimes I feel jus'--like biting him!"
Elizabeth surveyed her daughter with large eyes of pained astonishment.
"You make mother very sorry when you say such naughty things, Doris," she said, severely. "Hang up your coat and hood; then you must go up-stairs to your room and stay till I call you."
In the half hour that followed Elizabeth gave her youngest his supper of bread and milk and hurried him off to bed, endeavouring in the meanwhile to keep a watchful eye upon the operations of the heavy-handed Celia, now irreproachable in a freshly starched cap and apron, and an attentive ear for Carroll practicing scales and exercises in the parlour. Later there was a salad to make, which involved the skilful compounding of a French dressing, and last of all a hurried freshening of her own toilet before the quick opening of the front door announced the advent of the head of the house.