walls washed, and more foolishness!" Dorothea's
eyes rolled and her voice was emphatic. "I don't believe in a lot of
things, Uncle Winthrop. I wasn't really sick, and just had a teensy,
weensy bit of pain in my throat; and if I'd known what they were
going to do to me I'd have been one of those Science Christians and
kept it to myself."

"But suppose you had given it to Channing?" Dorothea's uncle settled
Dorothea more steadily on his lap. "The foolishness of wisdom is all
some see of it, but if Channing had taken diphtheria from you--"

"I don't believe there was any diphtheria for him to take. If I'd
been a poor person it would have been plain sore throat, and I'd had
some peace. Timkins says his little girl was a heap sicker than I
was, and her mother nursed her all the time, and she got well long
before I did. Are we very rich, Uncle Winthrop?"

"You are not billionaires. Your father has been fortunate and made
some money--"

"Is making money fortunate? Of course, I like nice things; but a
whole lot of us children feel like"--Dorothea's arms waved as if to
free herself from unseen strappings--"feel like Chinese children.
Our feet aren't really bound, sure enough, but we can't do like we
like. Sometimes I just want to run as fast as a racehorse, and
holler as loud as the poor children do in the park. I hate
regulations and proper things. If father were to lose his money, do
you suppose we would have to have a special time for everything we
do? Go to bed, and get up, and eat, and say lessons, and study
lessons, and take lessons, and go out, and come in, and lie down in a
dark room, and go again to drive or walk, and in between everything
you do dress over again, and never, _never_ run or climb trees or
tear your clothes and have just plain fun? I love dirt. I do! I
have to be so careful with my finger nails and my clothes that if
ever I have children I am going to let them get right down in the
dirt and roll in it and make all the noise they want. Mother says a
loud voice is so inelegant. So is affectatiousness, I think, and I
wasn't born with a soft voice. I just bawl at Channing sometimes. I
do it on purpose. I'm like father. I get tired of being elegant.
Haven't you any kind of candy anywhere, Uncle Winthrop? Mother said
I could have a few pieces if it didn't have nuts in it."

Laine reached for a drawer in the book-piled table near which he sat.
"If I had known I was to have the hono