Booth Tarkington

“ Elsie was a beautiful child, whereas even the fonder of Daisy's two grandmothers had never gone so far as to say that Daisy was a beauty. Elsie was known for her sweet disposition, though some people thought that living next door to Daisy was injuring it. When Elsie came into a room where grown people were, they looked pleased; when Daisy came into a room where grown people were, they looked at their watches.
“Yes,” said Robert Eliot, confirming Master Coy's choice of an umpire. “I leave it to Elsie. Whoever Elsie says is dead, why, they got to be dead.” ”

“ His mallet described a brief arc in the air, and not Daisy's nose, but the more evident nose of fat Robert Eliot was the recipient. Contact was established audibly.
Robert squawked. He dropped his mallet, clasped his nose, and lay upon the good earth. Then when he looked at his ensanguined fingers, he seemed to feel that his end was hard upon him. He shrieked indeed.
Daisy also complained, an accident having befallen her, though she took it for no accident. “Ooh!” she said. “You made your elbow hit me in the stummick, Laurence Coy!” ”

“ When Robert heard Daisy thus again express her conviction, he gave forth an increased bellowing; and it was with difficulty that Renfrew got him to a hydrant in the side yard. Here, plaintively lowing, with his head down, Robert encarnadined Renfrew's trousers at intervals, while the young man made a cold compress of a handkerchief and applied it to the swelling nose.
“If I—'f I—'f I die,” the patient blubbered, during this process, “they got to ketch that lull-little Lull-Laurence Coy and huh-hang him!”
“Nonsense!” said Renfrew. “Stand still; your nose isn't even broken.” ”

“ Others were almost as deeply affected by Daisy's gloomy prophecy. As soon as she put the thought in their minds, Thomas Kimball, Freddie Mears and the remarkable Elsie were all convinced that Robert was near his passing, and with natural solicitude they had but the one thought in common: to establish an alibi. ”

“ Renfrew perceived that he was a fortification of some sort; for although the presence of a grown person has naturally a stultifying effect upon children, they readily forget him if he remains in his own sphere; then he becomes but part of their landscape; they will use him as a castle, or perhaps as a distant Indian. Renfrew was now a log cabin.
Elsie looked over their heads with large, far-away eyes. Elsie, like Muriel, seemed to dwell above the common herd.
“Ping! Ping! Pingety ur-r-r-r-r-ping!” Daisy shrieked from behind him. “You're all dead! Lay down!” ”

“ You never have a thought that the common herd around us doesn't have. You never read a book that the common herd doesn't read, and you don't even read many of them! What do you do with your time? I'm asking you!”
“Well, the truth is,” he said meekly, “if you come right down to it: why, most of the time I loaf around in our front yard waiting to see if you're not coming out or anything.” ”

“ And into such a revery—if revery it were that held no thoughts, no visions, but only the one glamourous portrait of an empty window—he fell today. The voices of the children, sharp with purpose, shrill with protest, but died in his tranced ear as if they came from far away. The whole summer day, the glancing amber of the sunshine through moving foliage, the white clouds ballooning overhead, the warm touch and smell of the air—these fell away from his consciousness. “He's nothing,” the lonely poetess brusquely wrote of him ”

“ He was about to come out from the hedge when the disquieting afterthought struck him: Robert might have expressed a wish to be taken to die in his own home. Therefore Laurence remained yet a while where he was.
BY the hydrant, Daisy was so interested in the departure of the injured brother and raging sister that she had forgotten her broken stummick and the semi-circular position she had assumed to assuage it, or possibly to keep the broken parts together. ”

“ She went indoors, and having ascended to her own room, presently sat down and engaged herself with writing materials. Little shadows of despondency played upon her charming forehead as she wrote:
Life is so terrible! ”

“ I always used to think that a girl that usually had an intellectual nature had to wear horn spectacles and have her dress higher on one side than it was on the other, and wear these sensible-looking shoes, and everything like that. ”

“ But he began to feel that Laurence perceived that Elsie was on a higher plane.
Elsie seemed to think so herself. “I doe' care 'nything about it,” remained her unaltered verdict. “I doe' care a thing which is dead or which isn't.”
“Well, then,” said Laurence Coy, “we might as well play somep'm else.”
“All right,” Daisy agreed. “Le's play I'm a grea' big Injun woyer, an' all the rest of you are children I got to come an' scalp.”
Her proposal met with no general favor—with no favor at all, in fact. “For heaven's sakes!” Thomas Kimball said. “I'd like to know what you take us for!” ”

“ Laurence Coy retorted, and his severity was more than equal to hers. “We never came an' ast you if we could, did we? You better learn sense enough to know that long as you ast ws, we got a right to play what we want to, because we're company, an' we aren't goin' to play have you scalp us!”
“You haf to,” Daisy insisted. “I got a perfict right to play what I want to in my own yard.”
“You go on play it an' scalp yourself, then,” Laurence returned ungallantly. “Elsie, what you want to play?”
“I doe' want to play rough games,” Elsie said. “I doe' like those fighting games.” ”

“ She stared at him. “Good heavens!” she said. “Do you think that would be rising to a higher plane?”
“A person has to begin,” he ventured to remind her. “Even at that, they tell me I probably couldn't get nominated till I tried for it two or three times. They tell me I have to keep on going around till I get well known.”
“Renfrew!” ”

“ Then she repeated slowly, with a slight shake of the head: “Yes—a cultural desert, utterly savorless!”
But Renfrew now became uneasy. “You mean the looks of he place and the—”
“I mean the whole environment,” she said. “These Victorian houses with their Victorian interiors and the Victorian thoughts of the people that live in 'em. ”