Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Families -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction
Sometimes we take sandwiches of chick,
And go off on a merry pick-a-nick;
Sometimes we in hammocks idly swing,
At other times we only sit and si-i-ng--
CHORUS:--Come, oh, come, etc.
"That's beautiful," said Patty when they had finished the song. "I'll learn
the words, and then I can sing it with you."
"Indeed you must" said Nan, "and now I'll sing you the song of the Barlow
family; they won't sing it themselves, but when you learn it, you and I can
warble it together."
"Sing a song of Barlows,
A family full of fun;
A father and a mother,
A daughter and a son.
"When the door is open
Hear the family sing!
All the people passing by
Run like anything."
"It's a base libel," said Uncle Ted; "we sing beautifully, and except that
Bumble flats, and Bob has no ear, there isn't a flaw in our singing."
The evening passed merrily by, and when it was bedtime, Bumble showed Patty
to her room.
When Patty found that a large front room on the second floor had been
allotted to her, she expressed a fear lest she might be inconveniencing
some one else by taking one of the choice rooms of the house.
"Not a bit," said Bumble. "Nan has the tower-room, because she likes it
better, and the house is so big, there are plenty of rooms, anyway. Of
course, if a lot of company comes, we may ask you to give up this, and take
a smaller room, but you wouldn't mind that, would you?"
"No, indeed," said Patty. "I'll move out at any time." Then Bumble kissed
her cousin good-night and went away.
Patty's trunk had been placed in her room, and she found that some one had
kindly unfastened its straps and clasps, so she had only to unlock it. She
unpacked her clothes, and hung up her dresses in the wardrobe and cupboard,
and put things neatly away in the bureau-drawers.
She placed her mother's picture on a small table, and looking at it
critically, she concluded that it was like Aunt Grace, but much prettier.
After this, Patty looked round the great room with much interest. It seemed
to contain a perfect hodge-podge of furniture. There were three
dressing-bureaus, and a huge wash-stand with two bowls and pitchers on it.
There were several large easy chairs, and an old haircloth sofa; there were
small tables, and bookcases, and a cabinet filled with bric-a-brac,
but,--and Patty could scarcely believe her eyes,--there was no bed!
When this fact dawned upon her, she concluded that one of the bookcases or
bureaus must be a folding-bed.
She tried to open them, but the bureau-drawers and the bookcase-shelves
proved themselves to be really what they seemed; then she looked for a bed
concealed in an alcove or an anteroom, but the curtains hid only windows
and the doors opened into ordinary closets.
Patty even looked in the fireplace and up the chimney, but she was
gradually forced to the conclusion that there was no bed at her disposal,
and that she must either report this fact to some member of the family or
sit up all night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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