just at present he pretends to look down on girls as entirely unnecessary articles in the general scheme of things, so Carol and I are letting him severely alone.

The Imp is my sister. She's twelve years old and a perfect nuisance. Carol and I have named her "The Imp" because she acts just like one. She likes to trot around with us all the time, but we won't have it. It's impossible to have a child of twelve continually hanging on to girls of fifteen or sixteen, and Carol and I simply won't stand it. The Imp is fearfully miffed about this and spends her time thinking up revengeful things to do to us. She makes our lives perfectly miserable sometimes, though we wouldn't let her know it for the world.Carol's house is on the River Road side of the Green. She lives there
with just her mother and her Aunt Agatha. The Fayres are distant
relatives of ours, so Carol and I are really cousins. Their house is one
of the old style, a real New England farmhouse, and they have a glorious
big barn in the back, where we've all played ever since we were babies.
One little room off the haymow Carol and I have fixed up as our private
den and study. We keep our books and our fancywork there, and her mother
gave us an old desk where we do our school work. We always keep the den
locked with a padlock, because the Imp would like to get in and rummage
around. She's as mad as a hatter because she can't. She threatens to
climb in the window sometime, but I don't believe she could possibly. If
she did, she'd probably break her neck.Carol is fifteen years old, and I'm sixteen. Her name is really
Caroline, but she hates it and wants to be called "Carol" instead. She
says it's so much prettier. And mine is even worse--_Susan_! Could
anything be more dreadful? I've insisted on being called "Susette," which at least is a prettier French form. But no one except Carol will
ever call me that. Every one calls me either "Susie" or "Sue," that is, all but the Imp. She, of course, knowing how much I detest it, will say
nothing but "So-o-san" on all occasions. Carol she addresses by the
horrible nickname of "Cad." Why are some children so irritating, I
wonder? The infuriating part is that the Imp's own name is really
lovely--Helen Roberta--and she knows it, little torment that she is!Well, I haven't yet told about the third house on the Green, so now I
come to that. It's the one on the Cranberry Bog Road side. It's by far
the most interesting of the three,--a long, rambling colonial farmhouse,
built, they say, way back in seventeen hundred and something. It has the
most fascinating additions in all directions from the main part, and
queer little back stairways and old slave quarters, and I don't know
what else. But the people who live in 

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