Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley

Another spring found the members of the Jenkins Syndicate still banking

regularly and flourishing in their various walks in life. The Boarder

had received a "raise"; Lily Rose was spending her leisure time in

fashioning tiny garments which she told Cory were for a doll baby; Iry

was wearing his first trousers cut over from a pair discarded by Bud;

and Amarilly was acquiring book lore with an ease and rapidity which

delighted Miss Varley and Derry. Through the medium of Mr. Vedder the

attention of the manager of a high class vaudeville had been drawn to

Bud, and he was now singing every night with a salary that made the

neighbors declare that "them Jenkinses was getting to be reg'ler

Rockyfellers."

Amarilly coming home one Monday evening found the family grouped about

the long table listening with bulging eyes and hectic cheeks to the

Boarder, who had before him a sheet of figures. Amarilly was at once

alert, although somewhat resentful of this encroachment upon her

particular province.

"Oh, come and hear, Amarilly!" "Amarilly, we've bought a farm!"

"Amarilly, we air agoin' to live in the country!"

"Let me explain," said the Boarder, usually slow and easy going, but now

alert and enthusiastic of mien and speech. "We've got a chance,

Amarilly, to sell this place and make quite a profit. That new factory

that's agoin' up acrost the alley has sent real estate scootin'. With

what we git fer it, we kin make a big payment on a farm. I took a run

down yesterday to look at one we kin git cheap, cause the folks on it

hez gotter go west fer the man's health. What we hev all saved up sence

we bought the place will keep us agoin' till we git in our fust summer

crops."

"Tell her about the house," prompted Mrs. Jenkins, her quick, maternal

eye noting the bewilderment and disapproval in her daughter's expressive

eyes.

"It's all green meaders and orcherds and lanes," said the Boarder with

the volubility of one repeating an oft-told and well-loved tale, while

the young Jenkinses with the rapt, intense gaze of moving picture

beholders sat in pleased expectancy, "and the house sets on a little

rise of ground. It's a white house with a big chimbley and two stoops,

and thar's a big barn with two white hosses in it, and a cow and an

animal in the paster lot. A big pen of pigs, fifty hens in the henhouse,

and a few sheep. Thar's a piece of woods and the river."