Laughing Last

Fifteen-year-old Sidney Romley, the youngest of four sisters left under trusteeship after their poet father’s death, struggles with feeling different and longs for ordinary adolescent freedoms. Domestic scenes detail sibling debates over limited resources—embodied in the annual Egg royalty—and reveal teasing, sympathy, and practical counsel from her older sisters. The narrative examines coming-of-age tensions between personal desire and family duty, the strain of modest finances, and the sisters’ efforts to reconcile reverence for their father’s memory with their own needs, as everyday conflicts and plans force Sidney to stake a claim to adulthood.