"I kept dreaming, mamma, that my hair was two big honey-colored braids all wound up with pearls, like Marguerite's picture in _Stories of the Operas_." "Go to sleep, Lilly, like a good child. Our girl has got too much sense to fill her head up with such nonsense." "No, no, papa, I won't have common sense. I want to ride up to meet the sun, like the princess in--" "She wants to what? Are you sure her fever is gone, Carrie?" "Nonsense! It is stuff she reads in her fairy tales. Yes, darling, anything you want." "You know, mamma--pearls--in my hair--" "Yes, yes, darling. Sh-h-h!" "Mamma?" "Yes." "We're middle-class, aren't we?" "What does she mean?" "Middle-class people, I mean. You know." "Why, yes, dear, we're middle-class. I guess that is what you'd call it. What an idea!" "Help me." "Yes, yes. How, baby? The doctor will be here any--" "You don't know what I mean. No matter what I say, you don't know what I mean. Isn't that terrible?" "Help you to get well, that's what mamma and papa are going to do." "No, no, no! Help me--out--up!" Presently Lilly fell asleep. To her watching parents her light and regular breathing took on the meter of a Doxology. CHAPTER VI Center High School, the city's only at a time when half a million souls beat up like sea around it, a model and modern institution that was presently and paradoxically to become architectural paragon for what to avoid in future high-school buildings, was again within street-car distance, except on usually bland days, when Lilly and Flora Kemble would walk home through Vandaventer Place, the first of those short, private thoroughfares of pretentious homes that were presently to run through the warp of the city like threads of gold. On these homeward walks Flora and Lilly, who referred to each other as "my chum," were fond of peripatetically exchanging the views, the consciousness, and the sweetness of sixteen. "If you had your choice, Lilly, what house would you select for yours in Vandaventer Place?" "None." "Why?" "I don't want to live in between stone gates with 'No Thoroughfare' stuck on each end." "You're the funniest girl! What do you mean, 'No thoroughfare'? Don't you want to be exclusive and private?" "Yes, but a person can be private somewhere high--high--not just stuck between gates like everybody else. Sappho always sat on a balcony that overlooked the Aegean Sea." "Maybe she did, and she jumped off, too, but I'm not talking to-day's Greek history lesson. I'm talking about regular folks. Between the gates of Vandaventer Place would be good enough for me. Wouldn't I just love to be mistress over one of these houses and give parties with an awning stretched out over the sidewalk!" "What did you get in algebra, Flora?" "B plus. And you?" "B minus." "Lilly Becker, that is the fifth B minus you've had in succession. I'm going to call you Lilly Minus." "If she hadn't sprung that old oral exam on us--" "Oh, if ifs and ands were pots and pans!"