Page:Wiggin--Mother Carey's chickens.djvu/207

 "Dunno but I do, an' dunno as I do."

"Don't you love the rooms your father has finished here?"

"Kind of."

"Not any more than that?"

"Pop thinks some of 'em's queer, an' so does Bill Harmon."

Long silence, Nancy being utterly daunted.

"How did you come by your name, Lallie Joy?"

"Lallie's out of a book named Lallie Rook, an' I was born on the Joy steamboat line going to Boston."

"Oh, I thought Joy was Joy!"

"Joy Line's the only joy I ever heard of!"

There is no knowing how long this depressing conversation would have continued if the two girls had not heard loud calls from Gilbert upstairs. Lallie Joy evinced no surprise, and went on peeling potatoes; she might have been a sister of the famous Casabianca, and she certainly could have been trusted not to flee from any burning deck, whatever the provocation.

"Come and see what we've found, Digby and I!" Gilbert cried. "Come, girls; come, mother! We were stripping off the paper because Mr. Popham said there'd been so many layers on the walls it would be a good time to get to the bottom of it and have it all fresh and clean.