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BROTHER AND SISTER
BY
JOSEPHINE LAWRENCE
AUTHOR OF
"BROTHER AND SISTER'S SCHOOLDAYS"
"BROTHER AND SISTER'S HOLIDAYS"
BROTHER AND SISTER SERIES
BY JOSEPHINE LAWRENCE
1. BROTHER AND SISTER
2. BROTHER AND SISTER'S SCHOOLDAYS
3. BROTHER AND SISTER'S HOLIDAYS
BROTHER AND SISTER
CONTENTS
I. THE MORRISONS
II. GRANDMA HASTINGS
III. SISTER IN MISCHIEF
IV. PARTY PREPARATIONS
V. DICK'S BUTTONS
VI. RALPH'S PRESENT
VII. MORE PRESENTS
VIII. THE PARTY
IX. OUT IN THE BARN
X. THE HAUNTED HOUSE
XI. JIMMIE'S SURPRISE
XII. A LITTLE SHOPPING
XIII. A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT
XIV. TWO IN TROUBLE
XV. TROUBLE AGAIN
XVI. MISS PUTNAM COMPLAINS
XVII. MAKING UP WITH JIMMIE
XVIII. MICKEY GAFFNEY
XIX. A VERY SICK DOLL
XX. PLANS FOR MICKEY
XXI. BROTHER AND SISTER PAY A CALL
XXII. MICKEY OWNS UP
BROTHER AND SISTER
CHAPTER I
THE MORRISONS
"Brother," said Mother Morrison, "you haven't touched your glass of
milk. Hurry now, and drink it before we leave the table."
Brother's big brown eyes turned from his knife, which he had been
playing was a bridge from the salt cellar to the egg cup, toward the
tumbler of milk standing beside his plate.
"I don't have to drink milk this morning, Mother," he assured her
confidently. "Honestly I don't. It's raining so hard that we can't go
outdoors and grow, anyway."
Louise, his older sister, said sharply. "Don't be silly!" but Ralph,
who was in a hurry to catch his train, stopped long enough to give a
word of advice.
"Look here, Brother," he urged seriously, "better not skip a morning.
Your birthday is next week, isn't it? Well, if you're not tall enough
by Wednesday morning, you can't have the present I bought for you last
night. Too short, no present--you think it over."
He stooped to kiss his mother, tweaked Sister's perky bow of
hair-ribbon, and with a hasty "Good-bye" for the others at the table,
hurried out into the hall. They heard the front door slam after him.
Spurred by Ralph's mysterious hint, Brother drank his milk, and then
the Morrison family scattered for their usual busy day.
Brother and Sister were left to clear the breakfast table. They always
did this, carrying out the dishes and silver to Molly in the kitchen.
Then they crumbled the cloth neatly. Molly declared she could not do
without them.
"What do you suppose Ralph is going to give you?" speculated Sister,
carefully folding up the napkin Louise had dropped, and slipping it
into the white pique ring embroidered with an "L." "Maybe it's a train?"
"No, I don't believe it's a train," said Brother slowly, crumbling a
bit of bread and beginning to build a little farm with the crumbs. "No,
I guess maybe he will give me a tool-chest."
"Come on, and bring the bread tray," suggested Sister practically. She
never forgot the task in hand for other interests. "Mother says we
mustn't dawdle, Roddy, you know she did. It's my turn to feed the
birds, so I'll crumb the table. Could I use your saw if you get a
tool-chest?"
Brother answered dreamily that he supposed she could. He watched Sister
and her crumb-brush sweep away his nice little bread-crumb fences,
while he planned to build a real fence if Ralph's present should turn
out to be the long-coveted tool-chest.
When Sister had swept up every tiny crumb, she and Brother went out to
scatter the bits of bread to the birds who, winter and summer, never
failed to come to the back door and who always seemed hungry.
This morning there were robins, starlings, a pair of beautiful big blue
jays, and, of course, the rusty little sparrows. Each bird seemed to be
pretending to the others that he was looking for worms, and each one
slyly watched the Morrison back door in hopes that two small figures
would presently come out and toss them a breakfast of breadcrumbs.
Sister flung her crumbs as far as her short arm would send them, and
managed to hit an indignant old starling squarely in the eye. He glared
at her crossly.
"Birds don't mind getting wet, do they?" said Brother, as the sparrows
hopped about in the driving rain and pecked gratefully at the crumbs.
"Let's hop the way they do, Betty."
Sister obediently hopped, looking not unlike a very plump little robin
at that, with her dark eyes and bobbing curls. Only, you see, she and
Brother were much heavier than any birds, and they made so much noise
that Molly came to the door to see what they were doing.
"Another rainy day and the two of you bursting with mischief!" she
sighed good-naturedly. "Will you be quiet for an hour if I let you make
a dough-man while I'm mixing my bread?"
Brother and Sister loved to make dough-men, and so while Molly kneaded
her bread, they worked busily and happily at the other end of the
table, shaping two men from the bit of sponge she gave them and quite
forgetting to scold about the unpleasant weather which kept them
indoors.
Their real names, you must know, were Rhodes and Elizabeth Morrison.
Rhodes was six, and Elizabeth five, and sometimes they were called
"Roddy" and "Betty," but most always Brother and Sister.
This was partly because they were so many Morrisons.
There was Daddy Morrison, who was a lawyer and who went to town every
morning to a busy office that seemed, to Brother and Sister, when they
visited him, to be all papers and typewriters.
There was dear Mother Morrison, who was altogether lovely, with brown
eyes like Brother's, and dark curly hair like Sister.
There were Louise and Grace, the twins; they were fifteen and went to
high school, and were very pretty and important and busy.
Then there was Dick, the oldest of them all, and Ralph, who went to law
school in the city, and Jimmie, who was seventeen and the captain of
the high school football team.
Counting Brother and Sister, seven children, you see, and as Molly
truly said, "a houseful." Molly had lived with Mother Morrison since
Louise and Grace were babies, and they would not have known what to do
without her. She was as much a part of the family as any of them.
The Morrison house was a big, shabby, roomy place with wide, deep
porches and many windows. There was a large lawn in front and an old
barn in back where the older boys had fitted up a gymnasium with all
kinds of fascinating apparatus, most of which Brother and Sister were
forbidden to touch.
The Morrisons lived in Ridgeway, a thriving suburb of the city, where
Daddy Morrison, Dick and Ralph went every day.
And now that you are introduced, we'll go back to Brother and Sister
making dough-men in Molly's kitchen.
"What makes my dough-man kind of dark?" inquired Sister, calling
Molly's attention to the queer-shaped figure she had pieced together.
Sure enough Sister's dough-man, and Brother's, too, was a rather dark
gray, while the bread Molly was mixing was creamy white.
Mother Morrison, coming into the kitchen carrying Brother's rubbers and
raincoat, saved Molly an explanation.