The only rebellious members of her family were her mother and her brother-in-law. “Mother is slippery as an eel,” she said. “She won’t argue, always seems to agree, then she goes right ahead doing what she pleases.” She itched to regulate her brother-in-law’s life, and was irked that the children’s hotel life carried them out of her control. But now they were under her roof, and their dependence on her gave her a gratifying hold on their father. She wrote him immediately that she was taking the children, “straightening out the absolutely shocking effect on their manners and language of their life at the hotel,” and she would expect regular sums for their support. For answer Papa sent them a large box of saltwater taffy from Atlantic City and a series of pictures of himself and Mr. Hartwell wearing false noses and opera hats on the sides of their heads. Aunt Lois did not share the children’s delight over the communication.

They missed their old liberty, but their new life seemed to be a step upward in respectability, besides being luxurious beyond their wildest imaginations. They were convinced that nowhere in the world existed advantages superior to Aunt Lois’s home. There were no teachers rooming there now, though Aunt Lois did make extra money by selling insurance policies in her spare time. One of her recent whims had been to sell all of her old furniture and do the entire downstairs over in stylish Fumed Oak. The big parlor had gas coals in the fireplace, a Story and Clark player piano, an elegant rainbow-tinted glass chandelier with a red bead fringe, a bust of somebody (possibly Ulysses S. Grant), a bowl of goldfish with a wondrous castle inside, leather cushions with pictures of Indian maids burnt on them, a rack containing the piano rolls, sheet music out of the Sunday supplements, Etudes, and magazines old and new—Burr MacIntosh’s, Ainslee’s, Munsey’s, Delineator, Young’s, Smart Set, and the Blue Book. Most of these had been marked by Aunt Lois, and the favored poems or epigrams were carefully memorized by Marcia and pondered upon in the night. “Love is a flower, passion’s a weed”; “Men love women, women love love”; “Gods weep, the half-gods can only laugh.” These fruity thoughts gave a pleasingly theatrical background to Marcia’s impression of Aunt Lois’s house. Lena and Florrie were more impressed with the fireless cooker and the piano, where Lena, with Aunt Lois’s help, learned “Shepherd Dance,” the “Weasel Waltz,” and “Dorothy, A Country Dance.”