life? So Sara's laudable resolve was a balm to him.
She might have gone on improving had not the Williamses moved in next door, bringing with them a swing, a very big tea set, and a superior assortment of Teddy bears, and their daughters, one as old as Robert and another very little older than Sara. Sara would hang over the fence, saying, "I got a Teddy bear, too."
"Where we lived before we had rabbits, but we gave them to my auntie. You can't move rabbits when all the furniture has to go too."
"Why can't you?" asked Sara.
"Because your mama won't let you," the little girl, whose name was Tillie, replied with rather crushing finality.
Sara recovered with the statement, "Our Uncle Zotsby's got steam engine insides."
The next step in friendship was "Come over to my yard." "No, come over to mine," and then after polite conversation between mothers, a group of little girls playing in one yard or the other. Sara, however, under solemn promise of not going in the house next door without permission. It was now that Sara succumbed to that beguiler of childhood, "The House Next Door." Oh, lovely House Next Door! Oh, desirable house, spot toward which our footsteps turned. House so much more interesting than one's own house. House Next door, where grown-ups treat you with the consideration you deserve; house where the other children have to be polite to you; where it is to others that the words: "Be nice to your little friend; be a sweet, unselfish girl," are spoken.
All of us have bent our way toward that spot, and one of the very worst things about the city is that there can be, in the nature of things, no House Next Door.
