(AN: Next chapter. Read and Review everyone! Thanks everybody!)

Of Love, Life, and Laughter By CiCi

Norma was the first to break the eerie silence that seemed to overcome the Gates family.

"WE WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!" She screeched, sounding much like a banshee. "I refuse to live in this house with a shoddy newsie!" The family was forced to cover their ears because of her high-pitched screams.

Coriander looked to her right where she heard scurried footsteps. Suddenly, one of their maids came hurrying into the parlor.

"What is the matter in here, dears?" She asked in her immaculate British accent.

"Nothing is wrong here Julie. Please leave and close the doors behind you!" Christopher Gates boomed out.

"Yes sir." She said in an ashamed voice. She walked to the double doors leading out to the hall. She took one more look behind her at the family, walked out and shut the door with a final thump.

"Like Norma said, we are not having a disgusting, filthy newsboy in this house!" Cecilia said, turning back to the matter at hand, her voice rising an octave with every word.

"Cecilia dear, listen to me! We have to do this. I have already made the decision. This discussion is over!" Corianders father said in a firm, but soft toned voice. "Now get up! We must start preparing one of the guest bedrooms for him. He will be coming in three days. Call Julie back in here and tell her what's going on. Tell her to prepare a guest bedroom for the boy and to find out what size of clothes the boy wears. We are going to have to get him new clothes while he is here. I refuse to let him walk around this house, getting grease on everything from his clothes and grubby hands. He has to look proper if he is going to spend the next couple moths with us." He walked over to the couch and sat down with his hands covering his face.

And as Coriander watched her father she knew it was going to be long couple months with this boy. Coriander got up and smoothed her wrinkled skirt and abruptly walked out of the parlor and turned to left to go up the grand staircase. It seemed like forever before she got up the stairs and into her room. She looked at her expensively furnished room and flopped down on her bed with a sigh. She started to play with the fringe that had just started coming out of her down feathered comforter. Her soft blue and green colors on the walls were nowhere near how she wanted her room painted. Her mother had decided that since Coriander was not a little girl and that her favorite color was no where near close to pink anymore she would hire a painter to paint her walls. It was a dreadful surprise to come home from visiting her crazy Aunt Millie, which is not a pleasant experience at all, to a blue and green room.

Her dolls were lined up against her walls on shelves. Almost everyone of the doll had a pink or white dress. It horribly clashed with the walls, but her mother would not let her get rid of them. Her mother made her keep them on the shelves. It was sickening to her that her mother wouldn't let her change the furnishing around to the way that would suit her. But even with the bickering and fighting that she did with her mother she wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world, except maybe at her best friend Kaitlyn Briggs house. She never wanted to be put on the street fending for her self. Besides fending for her self she could never live without her down feathered comforter or the cherry pie that Miss White made in the winter. Or anything else for that matter. She stuck up her nose at the thought of living with a disgraceful newsboy. The fact that he was a newsboy was not a foreboding as the thought that he might have fleas and other horrid diseases and things wrong with him. The newsboys were always nice to her and her family, considering the tales and stories she heard from the other social elite families. She rolled her eyes at the thought of the lower class citizens.

Coriander picked her self up off her bed and walked out of her room. She stopped at the first portrait in the portrait and painting laden hall. The portrait was of her mother at her age. It was a gruesome sight. Her mother was just as stuck up in the picture as she was now. Maybe even more so. It wouldn't surprise her. But like always her mother had an aura of beauty around her, it could even be seen in the picture. She walked down the hall some passing pictures and paintings on the left and right of her. She came to a complete stop at the last painting. It was a picture of the family. They were all in their Sunday best. She once again rolled her eyes. Everyone in the painting looked happy and sweet, but in reality everyone one in this painting was anything, but happy and sweet. There was always bickering in her home, mostly caused by her mother. Her mother was never happy with anything and always wanted more. She continued down the hall and down to the base of the grand staircase. She heard voices in the family room.

"Julie I need you to go to get a room ready for our new company. I want to see it after your done. Please don't give him one of the new guest rooms, but one of the old ones. I'd rather not have the new sheets dirtied because of him, so please strip the bed on which he'll be staying in and give him the old bedspread in the laundry closet." Coriander peeked her head around the door and found her mother standing in the middle of the family room directing Julie to what she needed to get done before the young man got there. "This needs to be done before the third of the month. Also when he gets here I want you to find out the size of shoe and clothes he wears. We are to find some clothes for him. If we cant find any here then we will have to go buy some. Please search the house for any unused boys clothes that our guests might of accidentally left."

"Yes Mrs. Gates. I will do this right away." Julie bobbed her head up and down signaling that she understood.

Cecilia sighed. Julie walked out of the family room and past Coriander without even noticing her. Coriander watched her fix her white bonnet and turn a corner, most likely on her way to get everything ready for the newcomer. Coriander peeked her head into the family room where her mother was on the Victorian chaise lounge in the corner of the room and had her eyes closed as if in pain. Coriander knew then that this young man was going to have a big effect on the family. A very big effect indeed.