The Luck of the Dudley Grahams: As Related in Extracts from Elizabeth Graham's Diary

								


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Transcriber’s note:



      In this book, words and phrases originally in italics are

      enclosed by underscores like this.

THE LUCK OF THE DUDLEY GRAHAMS
As Related in Extracts from Elizabeth Graham’S Diary
by
ALICE CALHOUN HAINES
Illustrations by Francis Day

New York
Henry Holt and Company
1907
Copyright, 1907,
by
Henry Holt and Company
Published October, 1907
The Quinn & Boden Co. Press
Rahway, N. J.

                              To My Mother



           Thy heart will read what others do not see;

           Therefore, dear heart, this book is most for thee.

                     THE LUCK OF THE DUDLEY GRAHAMS

                                       New York, Wednesday, November 26.

We are the Dudley Grahams,—four children and a mother. We are very poor
and keep a boarding-house; not because we like boarders, but because
when dear father died a three thousand dollar life assurance and this
house were our only “available assets,” as Uncle George, who was
executor, explained: “and so you must take boarders.” We do; but it
isn’t always pleasant.
The three thousand dollars did not last long, either; for there were a
great many debts to be met that nobody had known anything about, and we
had to have the library repapered and a new carpet in the hall, to
impress the people who came to look for rooms. “We must be very polite
and charming, too,” said Ernie, “and talk as hard as we can all the
time, and then perhaps they won’t notice how shabby the rest of the
things are.” But I fancy they did; because it was over two months before
we could get anybody to stop with us, and the money in the bank grew
less and less, while Uncle George grew more grim and disapproving, and
said that dear father had been “criminally careless,” and that no man
should be permitted to have a family, if he did not know enough to
provide for it. But, at last, Miss Brown came; and then Mrs. Hudson and
the Hancocks, and now we are really beginning to get along.
Father was Uncle George’s only brother. He was an inventor, and a true
genius; but, unfortunately, nobody ever discovered this, except just us.
He knew all about air-currents, the contractile bladders of fish, and
the flight of birds. There is a great, ghostly, flying-machine in the