And consequently,
although no family had more visitors, they were not the right sort of
visitors.

This was, of course, not apparent to the children for a good many
years. Home was home, as it is to children. It did not seem strange
to them that instead of living in a small rented house on a closely
built-up street near the campus in the section of the city occupied by
the other faculty families, they lived in a rambling, large-roomed old
farmhouse with five acres of land around it, on the edge of the West
Side. They did not know how heartily this land-owning stability was
condemned as folly by the rent-paying professors, perching on the
bough with calculated impermanence so that they might be free to
accept at any moment the always anticipated call to a larger salary.
They did not know, not even Sylvia, for many years, that the West Side
was the quite unfashionable part of town. It did not seem strange to
them to see their father sweeping his third-floor study with his own
hands, and they were quite used to a family routine which included
housework for every one of them. Indeed, a certain amount of this was
part of the family fun. "Come on, folks!" Professor Marshall would
call, rising up from the breakfast table, "Tuesday--day to clean the
living-room--all hands turn to!" In a gay helter-skelter all hands
turned to. The lighter furniture was put out on the porch. Professor
Marshall, joking and laughing, donned a loose linen overall suit to
protect his "University clothes," and cleaned the bare floor with a
big oiled mop; Mrs. Marshall, silent and swift, looked after mirrors,
windows, the tops of bookcases, things hard for children to reach;
Sylvia flourished a duster; and Judith and Lawrence out on the porch,
each armed with a whisk-broom, brushed and whacked at the chairs and
sofas. There were no rugs to shake, and it took but an instant to set
things back in their places in the clean-smelling, dustless room.

This daily drill, coming as it did early in the morning, usually
escaped the observation of any but passing farmers, who saw nothing
amiss in it; but facetiously exaggerated reports of its humors reached
the campus, and a certain set considered it very clever to lay bets as
to whether the Professor of Political Economy would pull out of his
pocket a handkerchief, or a duster, or a child's shirt, for it was
notorious that the children never had nursemaids and that their father
took as much care of them as thei