"Why, yes; I suppose I have," assented Elizabeth doubtfully. "Now, Robbie; I want you to promise me that you will be a good boy this morning, and not get into any mischief; I'm going to be very, very busy, and----"
"I'll be good," responded the young person cheerfully. "I'll be gooder 'an anything. Where's Carroll?"
"He's in the other room; but--wait a minute, dear. You remember the last time you played with Carroll you----"
"Yes, 'm; I 'member. We made an ocean in the bath-room, an' you said----"
"Doris took a bad cold from getting so wet, and Richard almost had the croup."
"I won't do it again," promised the visitor, digging his toes rather shamefacedly under a loosened edge of the linoleum. "I'll jus' look at pictures, 'n'--'n' things like that."
"Very well; I'll take you in where the children are playing. Carroll will be glad to see you; I'm sure," she added, feeling that she had been rather ungracious to her friend's child.
The three young Brewsters greeted their neighbour with a whoop of joy. Master Stanford was blessed with a pleasantly inventive turn of mind, and one could generally depend upon a break in the monotony of the home circle when he appeared.
"What'll we do?" inquired Doris, prancing gaily around the visitor, who gazed about him at the assembled Brewster toys with a somewhat ennuied expression on his small, serious countenance.
"Aw--I don't know; play with dolls, I guess. I promised I'd be good."
"We might play Indian," suggested Carroll hopefully. "Mother lets us take the couch-cover for a tent."
The visitor considered this proposition in Napoleonic silence. "Have your dolls got real hair?" he inquired darkly of Doris.
"Uh-huh; every one of 'em 's got real hair. My new doll 'at I got Christmas 's got lovely long curls. I don't play with her ev'ry day, 'cause mother's 'fraid I'll break her."
"Oh--we don't want t' play with dolls," objected Carroll. "Let's build a depot an' have trains a-smashin' int' each other."
"Nope; we'll play Indian," the visitor said firmly. "I'll show you how."
Under his able generalship the sitting-room was presently transformed into the semblance of a rolling prairie, with a settler's wagon in the midst of the landscape in which travelled Richard as husband and father, driving a span of wicker chairs, while Doris, smothering a fine family of long-haired dolls, sat behind.