"And the boys?"

"They went to practice for the game, but they ought to be home by now."

They entered the house and went into the library where a tall, dark-eyed girl was brewing tea. She looked up with a smile and Marian saw that she was a little like Miss Dorothy. "Here she is.

Here is Marian," cried Patty.

Emily nodded pleasantly. "Come near the fire," she said. "It is quite wintry out. How good it is to see you, Dolly. I am so glad you are coming home every week."

"Oh, what are those?" said Miss Dorothy as her sister uncovered a plate.

"Your favorite tea cakes, but you mustn't eat too many of them or you will have no appet.i.te for supper. It will be rather late to-night for the boys cannot get back before seven and they begged me to wait for them. I knew you would be hungry, though, and so I had tea, ready for you."

The two little girls, side by side, comfortably sipped some very weak tea and munched their cakes while the older girls chatted. But Patty made short work of her repast. "Hurry up," she whispered to Marian, "I have lots of things to show you and we shall have supper after a while. Is your cough very bad?"

"Not yet."

"They say mine isn't but I hate the whooping part. I hope it won't get worse."

"I'm afraid it will, for we've only begun to whoop and they say it takes a long time to get over it."

"Oh, those old they-says always are telling you something horrid.

Come, let me show you the boys' puppies before it gets too dark to see them; they're out in the shed."

"Oh, I'd love to see them." Marian despatched the remainder of her cake and was ready to follow Patty out-of-doors to where five tiny fox terriers were nosing around their little mother. They were duly admired, then Patty showed the pigeons and the one rabbit. By this time it was quite dark, so they returned to the house to see the family of dolls who lived in a pleasant room up-stairs.

"This is where we are to have lessons," Patty told her guest.

"Isn't it nice? Those two little tables are to be ours, and Emily will sit in that chair by the window. We arranged it all.

These are my books." She dropped on her knees before a row of low book shelves.

"Oh, how many," exclaimed Marian. "I have only a few, and most of those are old-fashioned. Some were my grandparents' and some my father's."

"Doesn't your father ever get you any new ones?"

"He might if he were here," Marian answered, "but you see I don't know him."

"Don't know your father?" Patty looked amazed.

"No. He lives in Germany, and hasn't been home for seven or eight years."

"How queer. Isn't he ever coming?"

"I hope he is. I wrote to him not long ago."

"Why, don't you write to him every little while?"

"No, I haven't been doing it, but I am going to now," she said, then, as a sudden thought struck her, she exclaimed: "Oh, dear, I am afraid I can't."

"Why not?" asked Patty.

"Because I used Miss Dorothy's typewriter at home. I don't write very well with a pen and ink, you know, though I can do better than I did."

"Oh, I expect you do well enough," said Patty consolingly, "and if you don't, dad has a typewriter, and maybe he will let you use that, and if he won't I know Roy will let you write with his. It is only a little one, but it will do."

"I think you are very kind," said Marian. "Is Roy your brother?"

"My second brother; his name is Royal. Frank is the oldest one and Bert the youngest of the three. There are six of us, you know; three girls and three boys. First Dolly and Emily, then the boys and then me."

"I should think it would be lovely to have so many brothers and sisters."

"It is, only sometimes the boys tease, and my sisters think I must always do as they say because they are so much older, and sometimes I want to do as I please."

"But oughtn't you to mind them?"

"Oh, I suppose so. At least when I don't and they tell daddy, he always sides with them, so that means they are right, I suppose."

There was some advantage in not having too many persons to obey, Marian concluded, and when the three boys came storming in, one making grabs at Patty's hair, another clamoring to have her find his books, and the third berating the other two, it did seem to Marian that there were worse things than being the only child in the house.

However, the boys soon subsided, so the two little girls were left in peace and Patty displayed all the wonders in her possession; the delightful little doll house which the boys had made for her the Christmas before, the dolls who inhabited it, five in number, Mr.

and Mrs. Reginald Montgomery, their two children and the black cook.

"The coachman and nurse have to live in another house, there isn't room for them here," Patty informed Marian. "Which do you like best, hard dolls or paper ones?"

"Sometimes one and sometimes another," returned Marian. "I don't know much about paper dolls, though. Mrs. Hunt gave me some out of an old fashion book, but they got wet, and I haven't any nice ones now."

"Emily makes lovely ones," Patty told her, "and I'll get her to do some for us; I know she will."

"How perfectly lovely," exclaimed Marian, beginning to feel that she had been very lucky when Dame Fortune sent the Robbins family her way.

"There is Emily calling now," said Patty. "I suppose supper is ready and we must go down. I will show you the rest of my things to-morrow. Coming, Emily," she answered as she ran down-stairs.

But it was because Marian's trunk had come that Emily wanted the little girls, and when this was unpacked and Marian felt that she was fairly established supper was announced. It was a plain but well cooked and hearty meal such as suited the appet.i.tes of six healthy young persons, three of them growing boys. As she saw the bread and b.u.t.ter disappear, Marian wondered how the cook managed to keep them supplied.

True to her promise Patty asked Emily about the paper dolls that very evening and she smilingly consented to make them two apiece.

"Just a father and a mother and a little child," Patty begged her sister.

"Very well," said Emily. "I think I can throw in the child."

"Marian, do you want the child to be a baby?" asked Patty.

"Oh, a tiny baby," said Marian. "If I may have that, I should be delighted."

"You shall have it," promised Emily and straightway fell to work to fill the contract for paper dolls, Marian watching her with a happy face. To see any one actually drawing anything as lovely as these promised to be was a new pleasure, and her ohs and ahs, softly breathed as each was finished, showed her appreciation.

The two little girls took themselves to a corner of the library where they could play undisturbed, making houses of the lower book shelves. "Oh, may we do that?" asked Marian in surprise as she saw Patty stacking the books on the floor.

"Oh, yes," was the answer, "if we put the books back again when we have finished. You take that corner and I'll take this, then we'll have plenty of room."

Such liberties were never allowed Marian at home, and she grew so merry over Patty's funny make-believes that more than once Miss Dorothy and her sister exchanged pleased glances, and once Miss Dorothy murmured: "I'd like her father to see her now. She has been starved for just that sort of cheerful companionship."

"She seems a very nice child," said Emily.