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!"