"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. CHAPTER IV SIDNEY DIGS FOR COUSINS The Romley house stood two stories and a half high, heavy-beamed, thick-walled, of square spacious rooms with deep-set windows and cavernous fireplaces under low marble mantels. Joseph Romley had chosen it because he said it was so big a man could think in it; he liked the seclusion, too, that the surrounding wall promised. If his wife faltered before the care it presented she had given no sign but had bravely spread their limited possessions through some of the rooms and had sensibly closed off others. There had never been a time since the Romleys took possession when the house had not needed painting and shingling, when the guarding wall was not crumbling and the gate swinging on one hinge, when the furnace was not needing cleaning and the plumbing overhauling. But the wind sang cheerily down the great chimneys and the sun poured in through the windows and the ancient elms housed hosts of birds and the hollyhocks bloomed early and late against the wall so that Joseph Romley knew only the beauty of the place and was content and his family, perforce, was content because he was. There had never been enough of the fine old furniture Mrs. Romley had collected in her bridehood to furnish a separate room for each one of the girls. Isolde and Trude had always shared a sunny room over the study. In a back room Victoria and Sidney still used the narrow beds of nursery days. Only lately Victoria had painted them gray with a trim of pink rose buds but the effect had suffered so sharply from Sidney's "truck" that Sidney had been coerced into taking her precious belongings to the attic where she established a kingdom of her own.