Bro And Sis Chapter 1

Blood brother AND Sis

by Josephine Lawrence
Illus. by Julia Greene

New York
Cupples & Leon Company
Copyright 1921

Scanned by Deidre Johnson for her Josephine Lawrence website; delight do not use on other sites without permission

"Three bundles and one boy landed in a heap on the flooring."

CHAPTER I

THE MORRISONS

"Blood brother," said Female parent Morrison, "you haven't touched your drinking glass of milk. Bustle at present, and beverage it earlier we leave the tabular array."

Brother'southward big brown eyes turned from his knife, which he had been playing was a span 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 forenoon, 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 plenty to give a word of advice.

"Look hither, Brother," he urged seriously, "meliorate not skip a morning time. Your altogether is adjacent calendar week, isn't it? Well, if yous're not tall enough by Midweek morn, you tin can't have the present I bought for you last night. As well short, no present�yous remember it over."

He stooped to kiss his mother, tweaked Sister's perky bow of hair-ribbon, and with a jerky "Proficient-adieu" for the others at the table, hurried out into the hall. They heard the front door slam after him.

Spurred by Ralph'southward mysterious hint, Brother drank his milk, and and so the Morrison family scattered for their usual busy twenty-four hour period.

Blood brother and Sister were left to clear the breakfast table. They ever did this, carrying out the dishes and silverish to Molly in the kitchen. Then they crumbled the cloth neatly. Molly declared she could non do without them.

"What do you suppose Ralph is going to give yous?" speculated Sis, carefully folding upwards the napkin Louise had dropped, and slipping information technology into the white pique ring embroidered with an "L."

"Maybe it's a railroad train?"

"No, I don't believe it's a train," said Blood brother slowly, crumbling a bit of bread and beginning to build a little farm with the crumbs. "No, I approximate maybe he will give me a toolchest."

"Come up on, and bring the staff of life tray," suggested Sis practically. She never forgot the task in hand for other interests. "Mother says nosotros mustn't dawdle, Roddy, you know she did. It'south my turn to feed the birds, so I'll crumb the tabular array. Could I apply your saw if you become a toolchest ?"

Brother answered dreamily that he supposed she could. He watched Sis and her crumbbrush sweep away his nice trivial breadstuff-crumb fences, while he planned to build a real argue if Ralph'due south present should turn out to be the long-coveted toolchest.

When Sis had swept up every tiny crumb, she and Brother went out to scatter the $.25 of bread to the birds who, winter and summer, never failed to come to the back door and who e'er 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 exist 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 up out and toss them a breakfast of breadcrumbs.

Sister flung her crumbs equally far as her short arm would ship them, and managed to hit an indignant old starling squarely in the heart. He glared at her crossly.

"Birds don't mind getting wet, do they?" said Brother, as the sparrows hopped almost in the driving rain and pecked gratefully at the crumbs. "Allow's hop the way they practice, Betty."

Sis obediently hopped, looking non unlike a very plump trivial robin at that, with her nighttime 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 encounter what they were doing.

"Another rainy day and the two of you bursting with mischief!" she sighed skilful-naturedly. "Will you be quiet for an hour if I let you lot make a dough-man while I'grand mixing my staff of life?"

Brother and Sister loved to make dough-men, and and so while Molly kneaded her bread, they worked busily and happily at the other finish of the table) shaping 2 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 v, and sometimes they were called "Roddy" and "Betty," simply most always Brother and Sister.

This was partly because they were then 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 birthday lovely, with dark-brown optics similar Brother's, and night curly pilus like Sister.

At that place were Louise and Grace, the twins; they were fifteen and went to high school, and were very pretty and important and busy.

Then in that location was Dick, the oldest of them all, and Ralph, who went to police force school in the city, and Jimmie, who was seventeen and the captain of the high school football squad.

Counting Brother and Sis, seven children, yous see, and as Molly truly said, "a houseful." Molly had lived with Mother Morrison since Louise and Grace were babies, and they would non accept known what to practise without her. She was as much a office of the family unit every bit any of them.

The Morrison house was a big, shabby, roomy identify with wide, deep porches and many windows. There was a big lawn in front and an quondam barn in back where the older boys had fitted upwards a gymnasium with all kinds of fascinating appliance, near of which Brother and Sister were forbidden to touch.

The Morrisons lived in Ridgeway, a thriving suburb of the metropolis, where Daddy Morrison, Dick and Ralph went every twenty-four hour period.

And now that you are introduced, we'll go dorsum to Brother and Sister making dough-men in Molly's kitchen.

"What makes my dough-man kind of night?" inquired Sister, calling Molly's attention to the queer-shaped figure she had pieced together.

Sure enough Sister'due south dough-man, and Brother's, too, was a rather dark grayness, while the bread Molly was mixing was creamy white.

Female parent Morrison, coming into the kitchen carrying Brother'southward rubbers and raincoat, saved Molly an explanation.

On to chapter 2

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