Nearly Bedtime Part 7

"I _knew_ something would happen to Norah. It always does if she says nasty things."

"Rubbish, Mollie! That's nonsense! She fell down because her bolster was so big, and she couldn't see where the stairs came!" cried Pattie.

"I'm going to see where she's hurted herself," announced little Kitty; and she trudged off, leaving Pattie and Mollie to sort the heap of odds and ends that lay on the landing.

They went about it in doleful silence at first.

Then Mollie said, "This _is_ my counterpane--isn't it, Pattie?"

"No; that's Norah's. Don't you see the corner all crumpled up which she holds in her hand when she goes to sleep?"

"Oh dear! oh dear! I don't think, after all, that it's _easy_ having a B. D. S. It seemed just to spoil it all when Norah went thumping down--down, like a big ball."

Pattie gave a little sigh, too, and was putting down the chair she was carrying that she might rest her arms and have room for another deeper sigh, when mother's voice was heard calling--

"Mollie! Pattie! I want you down here!"

Off they ran, feeling down in their little hearts that mother _must_ know how to put things happy again.

First of all they looked with interested and pitying eyes at Norah, whose head had become an odd shape, and whose face was white and patchy.

Then they stood side by side with Kitty, watching mother's face, and waiting.

"The B. D. S. has had a bad beginning, dears," she said. "I don't think it was a good plan to pull everything out of your rooms to start with.

But never mind that now."

As mother spoke she kept one hand behind her chair, and she smiled.

She was sorry for her little girls.

"I am going to propose," she went on, "that you should alter your society a little bit. The _letters_ will be the same. It will still be the B. D. S.; but the work will be different and easier."

The little faces all brightened as she continued--

"I like my little girls to be tidy and neat in their rooms; but I think mother knows best how the furniture should stand, and where the things look nicest. So I suggest that we call our society the Bedroom _Dusting_ Society. I will give you each a little cloth, and you shall dust your rooms every morning after nurse has made the beds. And _once a week_ I will award a prize."

Then mother drew her hand forward and held before their eyes a j.a.panese fan, with a long handle, to which was tied a dainty bow of blue ribbon.

"This," she said, "shall be given next Sat.u.r.day to the tidiest of the four members of your society. Now, what do you think of my plan?"

"It's just splendid, mother darling!" was the unanimous cry of the listeners; and a tangle of soft loving arms nearly throttled her in a sudden embrace.

"And you _know_," came in a plaintive voice from Norah, "if you always give us a pretty thing like that for a prize, it _will_ be the Bedroom _Decorating_ Society, too!"

THE END.