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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at |http : //books . google . com/| I s, 1 1 : ^ t I \ f j OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS i I I I 1 i I I I HBn ISrlle Ik* ^aniatetf AMARILLY OF CLOTHES-UNE ALLEY MILDEW MANGE OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY A«'10h. L£N''X ANT TILDEN hOUNDATIONK J " ^'hat'a yaai nuh ? " I asked, when I had oTertaJcen him. See pas* ^^i- o ur Next-Door N eighbors By Belle Kanaris Maniates • With illustrations by Tony Sarg TtL" fiS^^^l % Litde, Boston Brown, and Company 19 17 THE Kr Copyright^ 1917y Bt Littls, Brown, and Company. All rights reserved Published February, 1917 •< .■■ ICorfnooti ^rrss Set up And electrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. Presswork by The Colonial Press, Boston, Mass., U.S.A. i / I n in IV V VI vn VIII IX About Silvia and Myself . . 1 Intbodocinq Ode Next-door Neighbors .... 9 In Which We Are Pestered by folydorbs .... 48 In Which We Take Boarders 4fi In Which We Take a Vacation 68 A Flirt and a Wouan-Hatbr 78 In Which Nothing MtrcH Happens 91 Ptolemy Disappears and I Visit a Haunted House . , . 100 In Which We See Ghosts . 124 [vl CONTENTS CHAPTER XI XII xin XIV XV XVI xvn xvm XIX XX PAGE In Which We Make Some Dis- coveries 139 A Bad Means to a Good End . 153 "Too Much Polydores" . . 165 Rob's Friend the Reporter . 174 A Midnight Excursion . . 196 What Miss Frayne Found Out . 204 Ptolemy's Tale .... 214 All About Uncle Issachar's Visit 230 In Which I Decide on Extreme Measures ^55 Which Has to Do with Some Letters 268 "The Money We Earnt for You" 277 [vi] "What's your rush?" I asked, when I had overtaken him . . Frontispiece Uncle Issachar 10 Dr. Felix Polydore 23 "Lucien Wade!" she gasped. "Here are our letters to Beth and Rob" 81 He pleaded eloquently to be taken with us 103 I babbled aimlessly to myself and then managed to pull together and beat it to the lake 126 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The landlady in tears waylaid me . . ISS I had to carry Diogenes most of the way 169 Now and then above his howls, I heard Silvia's plaintive protests outside the door 193 I held out my hand, which he shook solemnly, but with an injured air 225 "He went to the front window and dropped a young kitten down on the old gent's head" . . .243 "We heard a suppressed sneeze, and Rob pulled Emerald from under- neath" 257 [ viii ] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS Chapter I About Silvia and Myself SOME people have children bom unto them, some acquire children and others have children thrust upon them. Silvia and I are of the last named class. We have no offspring of our own, but yesterday, today, and forever we have those of our neighbor. [11 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS We were born and bred in the same little home-grown city and as a small boy, even, I was Silvia's worshiper, but perforce a worshiper from afar. Her upcoming had been supervised by a grimalkin governess who drew around the form of her young charge the awful circle of exclusiveness, intercourse with child- kind being strictly prohibited. Children are naturally gregarious little creatures, however, and Silvia on rare occasions managed to break parole and make adroit escape from surveillance. Then she would speed to the top of the boundary wall that separated the stable precincts from an alluring alley which was the playground of the plebeian prog- eny of the humble bom. To the circle of dirty but fascinating ragamuffins she became an interested tan- gent, a silent observer. Here I had my [2] • • ABOUT SILVIA AND MYSELF first meeting with her. I was not of her class, neither was I to the alley bom, but sailed in the sane mid-channel that amelio- rates the distinction between high and low life. On this eventful day I was taking a short cut on my way to school. One of the group of alleyites, with the inherent friendliness of the unchartered but big- hearted members of the silt of the stream of humans, had proffered to little Silvia a chip on which was a patch of mud de- signed to become a fruitcake stuflFed with pebbles in lieu of raisins and frosted with moistened ashes. Before the enticing pastime of transformation was begun, however, Silvia was swiftly snatched from the contaminating midst and borne away over the ramparts. Thereafter I haunted the alley, hoping for another glimpse of the little picture [31 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS girl on the wall. At last I attained my desire. One Saturday afternoon I saw her coming, alone, down a long rosebush bor- dered path. A thrill ran through me. Our eyes met. Yet all I found to say was: "C'mon over." She responded to this invitation and I helped her over the wall. She looked longingly at the Irish playing in the mud, but a clean sandpile in my own backyard not far away seemed to me a more fitting environment for one so daintily clad. We played undisturbed for a never-to-be- forgotten half hour and then they found her out. Reprimanding voices jangled and the whole world was out of tune. Thereafter a strict watch was kept oi little Silvia's movements and I saw he only at rare intervals, when she w going into church or as she rode past o house. She always remembered me f ABOUT SILVIA AND MYSELF on such meetings a faint, reminiscent smile lighted the somber little face and her eyes met mine as if in a mysterious promise. She grew up an outlawed, isolated child deprived of her birthright, but in spite of the handicaps of so barren a childhood, she achieved young womanhood unspoiled and in possession of her early democratic tendencies. When I was making a modest start in a legal way, her parents died and left her with that most unprofitable of lega- cies, an encumbered estate. Then I dared to renew our acquaintance begun on the sandpile. She went to live with a poor but practical relation and was initiated into the science of stretching an inade- quate income to meet everyday needs. In time I wooed and won her. We set up housekeeping in a small, thriving mid-Western city where I se- [5] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS cured a partnership in a legal firm. Silvia had all the requisites of mind and manner and Domestic Science necessary to a "hearth- and home-" maker. We lived in a house which was one of many made to the same measure with the inevitable street porch, big window, trimmed lawn in front and garden in the rear. We had attained the standard of prosperity maintained in our home town by keeping "hired help" and installing a telephone, so our social status was fixed. There was but one adjunct missing to our little Arcadia. While at a word or look children flocked to me like friendly puppies in response to a call, to Silvia they were still an unknown quantity. I had hoped that her understanding and love for children might be developed in the usual and natural way, but we had [61 ABOUT SILVIA AND MYSELF now been married ten years and this hope had not been realized. She had tried most assiduously to cul- tivate an acquaintance with members of child-world, but into that kingdom there is no open sesame. The sure keen intui- tion of a child recognizes on sight a kin- dred spirit and Silvia's forced advances met with but indiflFerent response. She wistfully proposed to me one day that we adopt a child. My doubts as to the advisability of such a course were con- firmed by Huldah, our strong staff in household help. In our section of the country servants were generally quite con- versant with the intimate and personal affairs of the home. "Don't you never do it, Mr. Wade,*' she counseled. "Ready-mades ain't for the likes of her." When, in acting on this advice, I vetoed [7] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS Silvia's lukewarm proposition, I was con- vinced of Huldah's wisdom by seeing the look of relief that flashed into my wife's troubled countenance, and I knew that her suggestion had been but a perfunctory prompting of duty. Time alone could overcome the eflfects of her early environment I [8] Chapter II Introducing Our Next-door Neighbors ONE morning Silvia and I lingered over our coflfee cups discussing our plans for the coming summer, which included visits from my sister Beth and my college chum, Rob Rossiter. We wished to avoid having their arrivals occur simultaneously, however, because Rob was a woman-hater, or thought he was. We decided to have Beth pay her visit first and later take Rob with us on our vacation [9] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS trip to some place where the fishing facili- ties would be to our liking. However, summer vacation time like our plans was yet far, vague and dim. While I was putting on my overcoat, Silvia had gone to the window and was looking pensively at the vacant house next "I fear,' she said abruptly and irrele- [10] INTRODUCING OUR NEIGHBORS vantly, "that we are destined to receive no part of Uncle Issachar's fortune.*' Uncle Issachar was a wealthy but eccen- tric relative of my wife. He had made us no wedding gift beyond his best wishes, but he had then informed us that at the birth of each of our prospective sons he should place in the bank to Silvia's account the sum of five thousand dollars. We had never invited him to visit us or made any overtures in the way of communication with him, lest he'should think we were cultivating his acquaintance from mercenary motives. While I was debating whether the lament in Silvia's tone was for the loss of the money or the lack of children, she again spoke; this time, in a tone which had lost its languor. "There is a big moving van in front of the house next door. At last we will have some near neighbors." [11] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS . "Are they unloading furniture?'' I asked inanely, crossing to the window. "No; coiu'se not," came cheerfully from Huldah, who had come in to remove the dishes. "Most likely they are unloading lions and tigers." As I have already intimated, Huldah was a privileged servant. "They are unloading children!" ex- plained Silvia, in a tone implying that Huldah's sarcastic implication would be infinitely more preferable. "The van seems to be overflowing with them — a perfect crowd. Do you suppose the house is to be used as an orphan asylum?" "I think not," I assured her as I counted the flock. Five children would seem like a crowd to Silvia. "Boys!" exclaimed Huldah tragically,^ as she joined us for a survey. "I'll see that they don't keep the grass off our lawn." [12] INTRODUCING OUR NEIGHBORS Late that afternoon I opened the outer door of the dining-room in response to the rap of strenuously applied knuckles. A lad of about eleven years with the sardonic face of a satyr and diabolically bright eyes peered into the room. "We're going to have soup for dinner/* he announced, "and mother wants to bor- row a soup plate for father to eat his out of.** Silvia stared at him aghast. She seemed to feel something compelling in the boy's personnel, however, and she went to the china closet and brought forth a soup plate which she handed to him without comment. In silence we watched him run across the lawn, twirling the plate deftly above his head in juggler fashion. The next day when we sat down to dinner our new young neighbor again appeared on our threshold. "HaUoa!" he called chummily. "We [13] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS are going to have soup again and we want a soup plate for father/* "Where is the one I loaned you yes- terday?" demanded Silvia in a tone far below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, while her features assumed a frigidity that would have congealed father's favorite sustenance had it been in her vicinity. "Oh, we broke that!'* he casually and cheerfully explained. With much reluctance Silvia bestowed another plate upon the young applicant. "Wait!" I said as he started to leave, "don't you want the soup tureen, too, or the ladle and some soup spoons?" "No, thank you," he answered politely. "None of the rest of us like soup, so we dish father's up in the kitchen. He doesn't like soup particularly, but he eats it because it goes down quick and lets him have more time for work." [14] INTRODUCING OUR NEIGHBORS This time as he sped homeward, he didn't spin the plate in air, but tried out a new plan of balancing it on a stick. *I think," I suggested gently, when our young neighbor was lost to our sorrowful sight, "that it might be well to invest in another dozen or so of soup plates. I will see about getting them at wholesale rates. Our supply will soon give out if our new neighbors continue to cultivate the soup and borrowing habit." "I will buy some at the five cent store," replied Silvia. "I think I had better call upon them tomorrow and see what manner of people they can be." When I came home the next day it was quite evident that she had called. "Well," I inquired, "what do they keep — a soup house?" "They are literary people, the highest of [15] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS high-brows. Their name is Polydore, and the head of the house — " Mr. or Mrs.?" I interrupted. The head of the house," pursued Silvia, ignoring my question, "is a collector." "So I inferred. Has he a large collec- tion of soup plates?" "She collects antiquities and writes their history: He pursues science." "They were seemingly communicative. What did they look like?" " I didn't see them. After I rang I heard a woman's voice bidding some one not to answer the bell. She said she couldn't be bothered with interruptions, so I went on up the street to call on Mrs. Fleming, who told me all about them. She was also refused admittance when she called. On my way home I met that boy — that awful boy — " She paused, evidently overcome by the consideration of his awf ulness. [16] (< (( INTRODUCING OUR NEIGHBORS "He had been digging bait—'' Again she paused as if words were in- adequate for her climax. Well," I encouraged. He was carrying his bait — horrid, wriggling angleworms — in our soup plate!'' "Then it is not broken yet!" I ex- claimed joyfully. "Let us hope it is given an antiseptic bath before father's next indulgence in consomm6. After dinner I will go over and try my luck at paying my respects to the soup savant." "They won't let you in." "In that case I shall follow their lead of setting aside all ceremony and formality and admit myself, as their heir apparent does here." After dinner and my twilight smoke, I went next door, first asking Silvia if there was anything we needed, that I could [17] 4 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS borrow, just to show them there was no hard feeling. My third vigorous ring brought re- sults. A slipshod servant appeared and reluctantly seated me in the hall. She read with seeming interest the card I handed to her and then, pushing aside some mangy looking portieres, vanished from view. She evidently delivered my card, for I heard a woman's voice read my name, "Mr. Lucien Wade." After another short interval the slov- enly servant returned and oflFered me my card. "She seen it," she assured me in answer to my look of surprise. She again put the portieres between us, and I was obliged to own myself baffled in my eflForts to break in. I was showing myself out when my onward course was [181 INTRODUCING OUR NEIGHBORS deflected by a troop of noisy children headed by the soup plate skirmisher, who was the oldest and apparently the leader of the brood. "Oh, halloa!" he greeted me with the air of an old acquaintance, "didn't you see the folks ?'* On my informing him that I had seen no one but the servant, he exclaimed : "Oh, that chicken wouldn't know enough to ask you in ! Just follow us. Mother wouldn't remember to come out." I was loth to force my presence on mother, but by this time my hospitable young friend had pulled the portieres so strenuously that they parted from the pole, and I was presented willy nilly to the collector of antiquities, who had the angular sharp-cut face and form of a rocking horse. She was seated at a table strewn with books and papers, writing at [19] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS a rate of speed that convinced me she was in the throes of an inspiration, I forebore to interrupt. My scruples, however, were not shared by her eldest son. He gave her elbow a jog of reminder which sent her pencil to the floor, "Mother!" he shouted in megaphone voice, "here's the man next door — the one we get our soup plates from." She looked up abstractedly. "Oh," she said in dismayed tone, "I thought you had gone. I am very much engaged in writing a paper on modem antiquities." I murmured some sort of an apology for my untimely interruption. "I am so absorbed in my great work," she explained, "that I am oblivious to all else. I have the rare and great gift of concentration in a marked degree." I was quite sure of this fact. She took [201 INTRODUCING OUR NEIGHBORS another pencil from a supply box and resumed her literary occupation. As my presence seemed of so little moment, I lingered. "Mother/" shouted one of the boys, snatching the pencil from her grasp, "I'm hungry. I didn't have any supper.'' "Yes, you did!" she asserted. "I saw Gladys give you a bowl of bread and mUk." "Emerald took it away from me and drank it up." "Didn't neither !" denied a shaggy look- ing boy. "I spilled it." He accompanied this denial by a fierce punch in his accuser's ribs. "Here!" said the author of Modem Antiquities, taking a nickel from her pocket, "go get yourself some popcorn, Demetrius." "I ain't Demetrius! I'm Pythagoras." [21] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS "It makes no diflFerence. Go and get it and don't speak to me again tonight." The boy had already snatched the coin, and he now started for the exit, but his outgoing way was instantly blocked by a promiscuous pack of pugilistic Polydores, and an ardent and general onslaught followed. I endeavored to untangle the arms and legs of the attackers and the attacked in a desire to rescue the youngest, a child of two, but I soon beat a retreat, having no mind to become a punching bag for Polydores. The concentrator at the writing table, looking up vaguely, perceived the general joust. "How provoking !" she exclaimed indig- nantly. "I was in search of an antonym and now they've driven it out of my memory." [221 INTRODUCING OUR NEIGHBORS I politely offered my sympathy for her loss. "Did you ever see such misbehaved diildren?" she asked casually and im- personally, as she calmly surveyed the .free-for-all fight. "Children always misbehave before com- pany," I remarked propitiatingly. "Of course they know better." [281 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS "Why no, they don't!" she declared, looking at me in surprise, "they—" At this instant the errant antonym evidently flashed upon her mental vision and her pencil hastened to record it, and then flew on at lightning speed. I was about to try to make an escape when a momentary cessation of hostilities was caused by the entrance of a moth- eaten, abstracted-looking man. As the two-year-old hailed him as "f adder ", I gathered that he was the person responsible for the family now fighting at his feet. "What's the trouble?" he asked help- lessly. "She gave Thag a nickel," explained the eldest boy, "and we want it." The man drew a sigh of relief. The solution of this family problem was instantly and satisfactorily met by an impartial distribution of nickels. [241 INTRODUCING OUR NEIGHBORS With demoniac whoops of delight, the contestants fled from the room, I introduced myself to the man of the house, who seemed to realize that some sort of compulsory conventionalities must be observed. He looked hopelessly at his wife, and seeing that she was beyond re- sponse to an S O S call to things mundane, he frankly but impressively informed me that I must expect nothing of them so- cially as their lives were devoted to re- search and study. The children, however, he assured me, could run over frequently to see us. I instinctively felt that my call was con- sidered ended, so I took my departure. I related the details of my neighborly visit to Silvia, but her sense of humor was not stirred. It was entirely dominated by her dread of the young Polydores. "How many children are there?" she [25] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS asked faintly, "More than the five you said you counted that first day?" "They seemed not so many as much. That is, though I suppose in round numbers there are but five, yet each of those five is equal to at least three ordinary children." "Are they all boys? Huldah says the youngest wears dresses." "Nevertheless he is a boy. They are all unmistakably boys. I think they must . have been born with boots on and," con- scious of the imprints of my shins, "hob- nail boots at that. Even the youngest, a two-year old, seems to have been grad- uated from Home Rule." "I can't bear to think of their going to bed hungry," she said wistfully. "Think of that unnatural mother expecting them to satisfy their hunger by popcorn." "They didn't though," I assured her. [26] INTEODUCING OUR NEIGHBORS "I saw them stop a street vender be- low here and invest their nickels in hot dogs." " Hot dogs ! " repeated Silvia in horror, "Wienerwursts," I hastened to interpret. Chapter III In Which We Are Pestered by Polydores OUR life now became one long round of Polydores. They were with us burr-tight, and attached them- selves to me with dog-like devotion, remain- ing utterly impervious to Silvia's aloofness and repulses. At last, however, she suc- cumbed to their presence as one of the things inevitable "The Polydores are here to stay," she acknowledged in a calmness-of -despair voice. "They don't seem to be homebodies,*' I allowed. [28] WE ARE PESTERED BY POLYDORES The children were not literary like the other productions of their profound parents, but were a band of robust, active youngsters unburdened with brains, ex- cepting Ptolemy of soup plate fame. Not that he betrayed any tendencies toward a learned line, but he was possessed of an occult, uncanny, wizard-like wisdom that was disconcerting. His contemplative eyes seemed to search my soul and read my in- most thoughts. Pythagoras, Emerald, and Demetrius, aged respectively nine, eight, and seven, were very much alike in looks and size, being so many pinched caricatures of their mother. To Silvia they were bewildering whirlwinds, but Huldah, who seemed to have difficulty in telling them apart, always classified them as "Them three", and Silvia and I fell into the habit of referring to them in the same way. Huldah could [29] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS not master the Polydore given names either by memory or pronunciation. Ptolemy, whose name was shortened to "Tolly" by Diogenes, she called "Polly." When she was on speaking terms with "Them three" she nicknamed them "Thaggy, Emmy, and Meetie." Diogenes, the two-year old, was a Tartar when emulating his brothers. Alone, he was sometimes normal and a shade more like ordinary children. When they first began swarming in upon us, Silvia drew many lines which, however, the Polydores promptly eflFaced. "They shall not eat here, anyway," she emphatically declared. This was her last stand and she went down ingloriously. One day while we were seated at the table enjoying some of Huldah's most palatable dishes, Ptolemy came in. There [30] WE ARE PESTERED BY POLYDORES ensued on our part a silence which the lad made no effort to break. Silvia and I each slipped him a side glance. He stood statuesque, watching us with the mute wistfuhiess of a hungry animal. There « were unwonted small red specks high upon his cheekbones, symptoms, Silvia thought, of starvation. She was moved to ask, though reluc- tantly and perf imctorily : "Haven't you been to dinner, Ptolemy ?" "Yes," he admitted quickly, "but I could eat another." Assuming that the forced inquiry was an invitation, before protest could be entered he supplied himself with a plate and helped himself to food. His need and relish of the meal weakened Silvia's forti- fications. This opening, of course, was the wedge that let in other Polydores, and thereafter [31] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS we seldom sat down to a meal without the presence of one or more members of the illustrious and famished family, who made themselves as entirely at home as would a troop of foraging soldiers. Silvia gazed upon their devouring of food with the same surprised, . shocked, and yet inter- ested manner in which one watches the feeding of animals. "I suppose he ought not to eat so many pickles," she remarked one day, as Em- erald consumed his ninth Dill. "You can't kill a Polydore," I assured her. I never opened a door but more or less Polydores fell in. They were at the left of us and at the right of us, with Diogenes always under foot. We had no privacy. I found myself waking suddenly in the night with the uncomfortable feeling that Ptolemy lurked in a dark comer or two of my bedroom. [32] WE ARE PESTERED BY POLYDORES Even Silvia's boudoir was not free from their invasion. But one door in our house remained closed to them. They foimd no open sesame to Huldah's apartment. "I wish she would let me in on her sys- tem," I said. "I wonder how she man- ages to keep them on the outside?" "I can tell you," confided Silvia. "Em- erald and Demetrius went in one day and she dropped Demetrius out the window and kicked Emerald out the door. You know, Lucien, you are too softhearted to resort to such measures." "I was once," I confessed, "but I think under Polydore regime I am getting stoical enough to follow in Huldah's footsteps and go her one better." Our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Diogenes. Silvia screamed. Turning to see what the latest Polydore [33] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS perpetration might be, I saw that Diogenes was frothing at the mouth. "Oh, he's having a fit!'* exclaimed Silvia frantically. "Call Huldah! Put him in a hot bath. Quick, Lucien, turn on the hot water." "Not I," I refused grimly. "Let him have a fit and fall in it." "He ain't got no fit," was the cheerful assurance of Pythagoras, as he sauntered in. "Your mother would have one," I told him, "if she could hear your English." "What is the matter with him?" asked Silvia. " Does he often foam in this way ? " "He's been eating your tooth powder," explained Pythagoras. "He likes it 'cause it tastes like peppermint, and then he drank some water before he swallowed the powder and it all fizzed up and run out his mouth." "I wondered," said Silvia ruefully, [34] WE ARE PESTERED BY POLYDORES "what made my tooth powder disappear so rapidly. What shall I do !" " Resort to strategy ! " I advised. " Lock up your powder hereafter and fill an empty bottle with powdered alum or something worse and leave it around handy." "Lueien !'' exclaimed my wife, who could not seem to recover from this latest an- noyance, "I don't see how you can be so fond of children. I did hope — for your sake and — on account of Uncle Issachar's oflFer that I'd like to have one — but I'd rather go to the poorhouse ! I'd almost lose your aflFection rather than have a child." "But, Silvia!" I remonstrated in dis- may, "you shouldn't judge all by these. They're not fair samples. They're not children — not home-grown children." "I should say not!" agreed Huldah, who had come into the room. "They are imps — imps of the devil." [35] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS I believe she was right. They had a generally demoralizing eflFect on our house- hold. I was growing irritable, Silvia care- worn. Even Huldah showed their influ- ence by acquiring the very latest in slang from them. Once in a while to my amuse- ment I heard Silvia unconsciously adopt- ing the Polydore argot. As the result of their better nourish- ment at our table, the imps of the devil daUy grew more obstreperous and life became so burdensome to Silvia that I proposed moving away to a childless neigh- borhood. "They'd find us out,'* said Silvia wearily, ** wherever we went. Distance would be no obstacle to them." "Then we might move out of town, as a last resort,'* I suggested. "Rob says he thinks there is a good legal field in — " "No, Lucien,'' vetoed Silvia. "You've [36] WE ARE PESTERED BY POLYDORES a fine practice here, and then there's that attorneyship for the Bartwell Manufac- turing Company." My hope of securing this appointment meant a good deal to us. We were now living up to every cent of my income and though we had the necessities, it was the luxuries of life I craved — for Silvia's sake. She was a lover of music and we had no piano. She yearned to ride and she had no horse. We both had longings for a touring-car and we wanted to travel. "I've thought of a scheme for a little respite from the sight and sound of the Polydores," I remarked one day. "'We'll enter them in the public school. There are four more weeks yet before the long summer vacation." "That would be too good to be true," declared Silvia. "Five or six hours each day, and then, too, their deportment will [37] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS be so dreadful that they will have to stay after school hours." I thought more likely their deportment would lead to suspension, but forbore to wet-blanket Silvia's hopes. I made my second call upon the male head of the House of Polydore to recom- mend and urge that its young scions be sent to the public school. I had mis- givings as to the outcome of my proposi- tion, as the Polydore parents believed themselves to be the only fount of learn- ing in the town. To my surprise and intense gratification, my suggestion met with no objections whatever. Felix Poly- dore referred me to his wife and said he would abide by her decisic^n. I found her, of course, buried in books, but remember- ing Ptolemy's mode of gaining attention, I peremptorily closed the volume she was studying. [38] WE ARE PESTERED BY POLYDORES My audacity attained its object and I preferred my request, laying great stress on the quietude she would gain thereby. She replied that attendance at school would doubtless do them no harm, although she expressed her belief that the most thorough educations were those obtained outside of schools. Silvia was wafted into the eighth heaven of bliss and then some, as the result of my diplomatic mission. Of course the task of preparing pupils out of the pestiferous Polydores devolved upon her, but she was actively aided by the eager and willing Huldah and between them they pushed the project that promised such an elysium with all speed. The prospective pupils them- selves were not wildly enthusiastic over this curtailment of their liberty, but Huldah won the day by proposing that they carry their luncheon with them, promising an [39] OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS abundant supply of sugared doughnuts and small pies. Pythagoras foresaw recreation ahead in the opportunity to "lick all the kids", and I assumed that Ptolemy had deep laid schemes for the outmaneuvering of teachers, but as his left hand never made confidant of his right, I could not expect to fathom the workings of his mind. Early on a Monday morning, therefore, our household arose to lick our Polydore proteges into a shape presentable for ad- mission to school. It took two hours to pull up stockings and make them stay pulled, tie shoestrings, comb out tangles, adjust collars and neckties, to say nothing of vigorous scrubbings to five grimy faces and ten dirt-stained hands. At last with an air of achievement Silvia corralled her round-up and unloaded the four eldest upon the public school and then [40], WE ARE PESTERED BY POLYDORES proceeded to install the protesting Dioge- nes in a nursery kindergarten. Huldah stood in the doorway as they marched oflf and sped the parting guests with a mut- tered "Good riddance to bad rubbish/' Silvia returned radiant, but her rejoicing was shortlived. She had scarcely taken oflF her hat and gloves when the four oldest came trooping and whooping into the house. "What's the matter?" gasped Silvia. "Got to be vaccinated," explained Ptolemy with an appreciative grin. Of all the Polydores he was the one who had least objected to scholastic pursuits, but he seemed quite jubilant at our discomfiture. We were somewhat reluctant to under- « take the responsibility of their inoculation, especially after Ptolemy told us that his mother didn't believe in vaccination. I'll take 'em down and get 'em vac- cinated right," declared Huldah. "Their [41] <