Laughing Last

ions that had grown in Sidney's b

daughters were managed by two trustees who had been college friends of the poet and who, even in his lifetime, had managed what of his affairs had had any managing. One was a banker and one was a lawyer and

her favorite chocolate alligators, found them embarrassingly lacking in the dramatic qualities a "guardian," to be of any value to a girl, should possess. Nor did they ever bother their heads in the

upon Isolde and Trude. But after her father's death even Sidney realized that the League ladies were different. They were not shy any more, they swooped down upon the little household and cleaned and baked and sewed and "deared" the four girls, actually almost living in the house. Isolde and Trude had made no protest and had gone around with troubled faces and had talked far into the nights in the bed which they shared. Then one morning at breakfast Isolde had announced: "The League has paid the mortgage on this house so that we can keep our home here. It is very good of them-I'm sure I don't know where we could have gone. We must show them how grateful we are." And Sidney had come to know, by example and the rebukes cast her way by Isolde, that "showing them" meant living, not as they might want to live-but as the League expected the four daughters of a great poet to live. That was the pric

e Middletown High (as long as she could not go away to a boarding school), simply because

e League wanted her to be, with her grave eyes and her cloudy hair with the becoming fillets and her drawling voice and her clever smocks. Trude always wanted to oblige everyone anyway, and Vicky was so

ring in the deserted dining room. Maybe, after all, Isolde did not like being the daughter of a poet and her smocks and her fillets and all the luncheons and teas to which she had to go and the speeches of appreciation she had to make. And what did Trude dislike? She always seemed happy but maybe she wanted something. Sidney remembered once hearing Trude cry terribly hard in the study. She and Dad had been talking at dinner about college. They had come to the door of the study and Dad had said: "It c

e was pretty. She could take the old dresses which Mrs. Custer and Mrs. White, the Trustees' wives, and Mrs. Deering whom Isolde had visited in Chicago, and Godmother Jocelyn sent every now and then and

d for them. Isolde's few beaux were not noisy and jolly like Vick's-they all looked as though the League might have picked them out from some assortment. They usually read to Isolde ve

that had made Trude look all queer and white and Isolde, after she had read it, had gone to Trude and put her arms around her neck and Isolde only did a thing like that when something dreadful happened. Sidney had hoped that she might fin

beautiful with shiny furniture and rugs that felt like woolly bed slippers under one's tread and two pairs of curtains at each window and Nancy's own room was all pink even to the ruffled stuff hung over her bed like a tent. But Sidney had once heard Mrs. Milliken say to Isolde: "I hope, dea

there in the "quaint" bare house with the Trustees sending their skimpy allowances and long letters of advice and the ladies of the League of Poets coming and going and owning them body and soul? What was to prevent such a fate? They di

open door. Her arms were filled with a litter of boxes and old portfol

tters. Then she's go

Satu

receive the Leagu

ghter that she had to lean against the door fram

w why it's s

in a middy blouse and pigtails. What's Isolde thinking of? And you look much t

nor to wind the despised pigtails, around her head in the fashion Mrs. Milliken called "So beautifully quaint." Anyway, if there were all the time in the world she would not do it. She'd begin right now being her o

ar her fine defiance deserted her. She ran to the door and peeped t

ue of girls-girls of about her own age. They wore trim serge dresses with white collars, all al

of the League. She threw open the door. Mrs. Milliken's voice came to her: "He died on April tenth, Nineteen eighteen. He had just written that sonnet to the West Wind. You know it I

illiken and the strange woman with reverent mien,