“We’re moving, we’re moving, we’re moving to London Junction!” they chanted shrilly. This time they whirled through the gap in the hedge into Dr. Bird’s front yard. This was a hushed space, shaded with sleek-leafed bushes, wide-spreading locust trees that dripped feathery green over fern beds below. The sun never came here or into the shuttered, vine-covered house; it was an old people’s yard with a cool cemetery smell, suitable for an old man and old lady who never came out further than the plaster old man and lady in the tiny weather-house. Old Dr. Bird sat behind the porch vines, shelling peas into a tin saucepan.

“Hold on there! What’s all this?” he called out in a high trembling voice.

“We’re moving!” Lena answered. “We’re moving to London Junction.”

“Here,” said the old man. “Here you are, girls. Here’s a penny apiece.”

They flew to his side.

“Dr. Bird,” asked Marcia earnestly, “who will hold the string for you to tie up bundles when I go to London Junction?”

“Nobody,” said Dr. Bird. “I’ll have to do it myself.”

“I’m sorry,” said Marcia. “I liked putting a finger on the string. I don’t see how you’ll get along.”

“Never mind, here’s your penny,” said the old man. “Run along or your folks’ll drive off without you.”

“Say goodbye to Dr. Bird,” their mother called from the surrey now pausing in the driveway. “Well, here we go, Dr. Bird.”

“Glad, eh?”

“Indeed I am,” their mother answered happily. “You see, I’ll be there with Ma and Lois, and besides it’s a better place for Harry.”

“London Junction, London Junction, London Junction!” sang the two girls and whirled each other round and round across the lawn, down the dusty path till they fell in the geranium bed laughing. Their father, a slight, jaunty figure with a little sandy moustache, in a neat brown-checked suit, came out of the little yellow house carrying the baby in one arm and the red telescope in the other. The red telescope was the very thing in which Dr. Bird had first brought the baby. The two girls had looked in it carefully every morning for over a year to see if any other babies had arrived, but so far none had followed Florrie.

“Get in, get in!” shouted their father. “Do you want to go to London Junction or do you want to stay here?”

They scrambled over the wheels into the back seat of the surrey. The horse and surrey were borrowed from the Busby Hotel where their father had clerked until today. It was a handsome outfit, the shining black surrey with tan fringe twinkling along its top, and the gleaming black horse that Papa himself had “broke” in the field behind the hotel. There were leather storm curtains rolled up to be let down in case of rain, and a silver-trimmed whip in a silver-trimmed socket. This elegance so impressed Marcia and Lena that they sat still, proudly stretching their feet in the new Mary Jane black patent-leather slippers. Dr. Bird limped along the box hedge to the gate and watched them.