The two big children were asleep at last, and Julia Cloud stole to her own bed to lie in a tumult of wonder and joy, and finally sink into a light slumber, wherein she dreamed that she had fallen heir to a rose-garden, and all the roses were alive and could talk; until Ellen came driving up in her Ford and ran right over them, crushing them down and cutting their heads off with a long, sharp whip she carried that somehow turned out to be made of words strung together with biting sarcasm.
She awoke in the broad morning sunlight to find both children done up in bath-robes and slippers, sitting one each side of her on the bed, laughing at her and tickling her chin with a feather from the seam of the pillow.
"Now, Cloudy Jewel, you've just got to begin to make plans!" announced Leslie, curling up in a ball at her feet and looking very business-like with her fluffy curls around her face like a golden fleece. "There isn't much time, and Guardy Lud will be down upon us by to-morrow or the next day at least."
"Guardy Lud!" exclaimed Julia Cloud bewildered. "Who is that?"
"That's our pet name for Mr. Luddington," explained Leslie, wrinkling up her nose in a grin of merriment. "Isn't it cute? Wait till you see him, and you'll see how it fits. He's round and bald with a shiny red nose, and spectacles; and he doesn't mind our kidding at all. He'd have made a lovely father if he wasn't married, but he has a horrid wife. We don't like her at all. She's like a frilly piece of French china with too much decoration; and she's always sick and nervous; and she jumps, and says 'Oh, mercy!' every time we do the least little thing. She doesn't like us any better than we like her. Her name is Alida, and Allison says we're always trying to 'elude' her. The only good thing she ever did was to advise Guardy Lud to let us come East to college. She wanted to get us as far away from her as possible. And it certainly was mutual."
"There, now, Leslie, you're chattering again," broke in Allison, looking very tall and efficient in his blue bath-robe. "You said you would talk business, and not bleat."
"Well, so I am," pouted Leslie. "I guess Cloudy has got to understand about our family."
"Well, now let's get down to business," said her brother. "Cloudy, what have you got to do before you leave? You know it isn't very long before the colleges open, and we've got to start out and hunt a home right away. Do you have to pack up here or anything?"