"'When Johnny comes marching home again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The men will cheer, the boys will shout,
The ladies they will all turn out,
And we'll all feel gay
When Johnny comes marching home.'"
Dorothy went still further back into the history of her country, and
gave a faint imitation of an Indian war-whoop, to let the oncomer know
she was welcome, and presently Katherine burst impetuously through the
dense undergrowth.
"So here you are, Miss Laziness," she cried.
"Here I am, Miss Energy, or shall I call you Miss-applied Energy?
Katherine, you have walked so fast that you are quite red in the
face."
"It isn't exertion, it's vexation. Dorothy, I have had a perfectly
terrible time. It is the anxiety regarding the proper discipline of
parents that is spoiling the nervous system of American children.
Train them up in the way they should go, and when they are old they do
depart from it. There's nothing more awful than to own parents who
think they possess a sense of humor. Thank goodness mother has none!"
"Then it is your father who has been misbehaving?"
"Of course it is. He treats the most serious problem of a woman's life
as if it were the latest thing in 'Life.'"
Dorothy sat up in the hammock.
"The most important problem? That means a proposal. Goodness gracious,
Kate, is that insurance man back here again?"
"What insurance man?"
"Oh, heartless and heart-breaking Katherine, is there another? Sit
here in the hammock beside me, and tell me all about it.
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