The Dorrance Domain. Wells Carolyn
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groaned Lilian, "don't mention Mrs. Cooper's dining-room while we're in this one."
After the dining-rooms came the kitchens, supplied with everything the most exacting housekeeper could desire; but all on the large scale requisite for a summer hotel.
"I should think anybody could cook here," said Dorothy; "and as I propose to do the cooking for the family, I'm glad everything is so complete and convenient."
"You never can cook up all these things," said Fairy, looking with awe at the rows of utensils; "not even if we have seventeen meals a day."
"Will you look at the dish towels!" exclaimed Lilian, throwing open the door of a cupboard, where hundreds of folded dish towels were arranged in neat piles.
At this climax, Mrs. Dorrance sank down on a wooden settle that stood in the kitchen, and clasping her hands, exclaimed, "It's too much, girls, it's too big; we never can do anything with it."
"Now you mustn't look at it that way, granny, dear," said Dorothy, brightly; "this is our home; and you know, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. And if a home and all its fixings are too big, instead of too little, why, you'll have to manage it somehow just the same. Of course, I'm overpowered too, at this enormous place, but I won't own up to it! I will never admit to anybody that I think the rooms or the house unusually large. I like a big house, and I like spacious rooms! I hate to be cramped, – as possibly you may have heard me remark before."
"Good for you, Dot!" cried Leicester. "I won't be phased either. We're here, and we're here to stay. We're not going to be scared off by a few square miles of red velvet carpet, and some sixty-foot mirrors!"
"I think the place rather small, myself," said Lilian, who rarely allowed herself to be outdone in jesting; "I confess I have a little of that cramped feeling yet."
At this they all laughed, and went on with their tour of the house. Merely taking a peep into the numerous pantries, laundries, storerooms and servants' quarters, they concluded to go at once to inspect the bedrooms.
"Don't go up these stairs," said Leicester turning away from the side staircase. "Let's go back to the main hall, and go up the grand staircase, as if we had just arrived, and were being shown to our rooms."
"Oh, isn't it fun!" cried Fairy, as she hopped along by her brother's side. "I never had such a fun in my whole life! Wouldn't it be awful if we were really guests instead of purporietors?"
"You wouldn't be a guest," said Leicester, teasingly; "no well-conducted summer hotel would take a flibbertigibbet like you to board!"
"Nobody would take us Dorrances to board anyway, if they could help it," said Fairy, complacently; "we all know how obnoxiorous we are."
"I know," said Grandma Dorrance, sighing; "and if we can only make a little corner of this big place habitable, I shall certainly feel a great relief in not being responsible for you children to any landlady."
"Oh, come now, granny, we're not so bad, are we?" said Leicester, patting the old lady's cheek.
"You're not bad at all. You're the best children in the world. But just so sure as you get shut up in a boarding-house you get possessed of a spirit of mischief, and I never know what you are going to do next. But up here I don't care what you do next."
By this time they had reached the entrance hall, and assuming the air of a proprietor, Leicester, with an elaborate flourish and a profound bow, said suavely:
"Ah, Mrs. Dorrance, I believe. Would you like to look at our rooms, madam? We have some very fine suites on the second floor that I feel sure will please you. Are these your children, madam?"
"We're her grandchildren," volunteered Fairy, anxious to be in the game.
"Incredible! Such a young and charming lady with grandchildren! Now I should have said you were the grandmother," with another elaborate bow to Fairy.
Laughing at Leicester's nonsense, they all went up-stairs together, and discovered a perfect maze of bedrooms.
Scattering in different directions, the children opened door after door, pulled up blinds, and flung open windows, and screamed to each other to come and see their discoveries. Tessie followed the tribe around, wondering if she were really in fairyland. The unsophisticated Irish girl had never seen a house like this before, and to think it belonged to the people with whom she was to live, suddenly filled her with a great awe of the Dorrance family.
"Do you like it, Tessie?" asked Mrs. Dorrance, seeing the girl's amazed expression.
"Oh, yis, mum! Shure, I niver saw anything so grand, mum. It's a castle, it is."
"That's right, Tessie," said Leicester; "a castle is the same as a domain. And all these millions of bedrooms are part of our Domain. Our very own! Hooray for the Dorrance Domain!"
The wild cheer that accompanied and followed Leicester's hurrah must have been audible on the other side of Lake Ponetcong. At any rate it served as a sort of escape-valve for their overflowing enthusiasm, which otherwise must soon have gotten beyond their control.
"I think," said Mrs. Dorrance, "that it would be wise for you each to select the bedroom you prefer, – for to-night at least. If you choose to change your minds to-morrow, I don't know of any one who will object."
"Oh!" said Lilian, "to think of changing your room in a hotel just as often as you like, and nobody caring a bit! I shall have a different one every night."
"That won't be my plan," said her grandmother, laughing; "I think I shall keep the one I'm in, for mine, and make no change."
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