She always expected to read a great deal in the hammock, but often the book slipped unnoticed to the moss, and she lay looking upward at the little discs of blue sky visible through the checkering maze of green leaves. One afternoon, deserted by the latest piece of fictional literature, marked in plain figures on the paper cover that protected the cloth binding, one dollar and a half, but sold at the department stores for one dollar and eight cents, Dorothy lay half-hypnotized by the twinkling of the green leaves above her, when she heard a sweet voice singing a rollicking song of the Civil War, and so knew that Katherine was thus heralding her approach.
“‘When Johnny comes marching home again, Hurrah! Hurrah! We’ll give him a hearty welcome then, Hurrah! Hurrah! The men will cheer, the boys will shout, The ladies they will all turn out, And we’ll all feel gay When Johnny comes marching home.’”
Dorothy went still further back into the history of her country, and gave a faint imitation of an Indian war-whoop, to let the oncomer know she was welcome, and presently Katherine burst impetuously through the dense undergrowth.
“So here you are, Miss Laziness,” she cried.
“Here I am, Miss Energy, or shall I call you Miss-applied Energy? Katherine, you have walked so fast that you are quite red in the face.”
“It isn’t exertion, it’s vexation. Dorothy, I have had a perfectly terrible time. It is the anxiety regarding the proper discipline of parents that is spoiling the nervous system of American children. Train them up in the way they should go, and when they are old they do depart from it. There’s nothing more awful than to own parents who think they possess a sense of humor. Thank goodness mother has none!”
“Then it is your father who has been misbehaving?”
“Of course it is. He treats the most serious problem of a woman’s life as if it were the latest thing in ‘Life.’”
“The most important problem? That means a proposal. Goodness gracious, Kate, is that insurance man back here again?”
“Oh, heartless and heart-breaking Katherine, is there another? Sit here in the hammock beside me, and tell me all about it.”
“No, thank you,” refused Katherine. “I weigh more than you, and I cannot risk my neck through the collapse of that bit of gossamer. I must take care of myself for his sake.”