The Lilac Lady Part 3

Silence for a breathless moment fell upon the eager group, then with characteristic energy, Peace grabbed Allee's hand and started for the door, saying, "Come on, sister, let's get to work right away. We've got to win that picture to go with our porch." Just at the threshold another thought occurred to her, and she faced about with the remark, "Say, grandpa, do we have to spend _all_ this money for dec'rations?"

"No," he laughed. "If you can find anything in the attic which you can use, take possession of it."

"And the money we don't spend is ours?"

For a fraction of a second he hesitated, wondering what scheme was taking shape under the thatch of brown curls; then with a twinkle in his eyes he answered, "Yes, I reckon it is."

"But, Donald," whispered Mrs. Campbell in his ear, "they are too young to be intrusted with such a sum."

"Grandpa," Gail interrupted, looking thoughtfully at the check which Faith was still studying curiously; "must we do this without help from anyone else? Suppose we should all happen to choose the same plan?"

"Oh, there is no danger of that at all because your tastes are not all the same, so far as I can discover; but I think it might be a good plan to consult with some older or more experienced person--some one outside the family. Grandma and I are to be the judges, you know; so it would not be fair for us to know beforehand what you were intending to do."

"Oh, how splendid to have it all a secret from you two!" cried Hope.

"But who will help us?"

"We shall ask Frances Sherrar," announced Gail after a whispered consultation with her room-mate. "She knows all about such things."

"Then let's us ask Mrs. Sherrar," suggested Cherry, anxious to have as good authority to back them in their plans.

"That's a good idea," Hope conceded readily. "Whom shall you choose, Peace?"

They all expected to hear her name Mrs. Strong, her patron saint, but to their utter amazement she promptly retorted, "Gussie!"

"But, Peace," they protested, "Gussie won't know--"

"Gussie thinks just like I do about colors and such things. That's why I chose her."

Nor could the sisters change her decision in the matter, but as the time was short and there were many other affairs demanding their attention, the girls soon forgot their concern over Gussie's barbaric tastes, and Peace and Allee were left to their own devices.

For the next three days they spent their leisure moments in wandering hand in hand about the house, looking very sober, and listening anxiously to the sound of hammers in the rooms adjoining theirs. Then a marked change came over them; there were many conferences with Gussie in the kitchen; much prowling about the attic in secret, and even two or three trips to the barn to interview Jud, the man of all work. The sound of hammer and saw could be heard at almost any hour of the day, hurried visits were made to the sewing-room when no one else was in sight, and the pungent smell of paint and paste filled the house.

But at last all three rooms were in spick-and-span order, and the two judges were summoned to behold the result of the week's labor. At the first door they halted, and the President turned to his wife with a ludicrous grimace as he said, "Dora, I am afraid I've got us into trouble. How in this wide world are we going to be able to decide which is the prettiest room! And if it should be easy to decide that question, how shall we ever make our peace with the occupants of the other two?

Oh, Dora!"

"Open the door!" clamored the laughing girls. "You should have thought of these things before you made such a rash promise." And they pressed about him so relentlessly that he was forced to turn the k.n.o.b and enter the first bower of loveliness.

It was indeed a bower, so refreshingly cool and beautiful with its color scheme of pink and green and brown that it required very little imagination to transport one into the heart of some enchanted woods; and instinctively the four younger girls as well as the judges burst into a long-drawn exclamation of wonder and delight.

"Oh, I can smell the flowers," cried Hope, sniffing the air hungrily as if expecting to find the woodland blossoms there.

"And hear the creek," added Peace.

"I suppose they have won the prize," sighed Cherry disconsolately, while behind their backs Gail and Faith ecstatically hugged each other.

"Don't decide the question until we have seen the other two," suggested Mrs. Campbell sagely, and the excited company flocked eagerly into the next room.

Here everything was in blue and gold, even to the dainty curtains at the windows. The walls were covered with a delicate blue paper, dotted with sprays of cheerful goldenrod; the dresser and table were decorated with blue silk scarfs embroidered with the same flower; gilt-framed pictures hung upon the walls; and from the head of each narrow, gilded bedstead floated soft draperies of blue.

"Sky and sunshine," murmured Gail, quick to feel the perfect harmony of the room. "Isn't it lovely?"

"Yes, and it is fully as pretty as ours," whispered Faith, "though I like ours best."

"Now for the last," Cherry urged eagerly, well content with the rapturous exclamations her room and Hope's had brought forth. "This will have to be awfully good to beat the other two."

"It _is_ awfully good," Peace informed her. "_I_ think it is the best."

"So do I!" "And I!" came the chorus of surprised voices as the last door swung open and the beauties of the third chamber burst upon their view.

"It makes me think of fire-crackers," Cherry pensively observed.

"n.o.body but Peace would ever have thought of such a thing," Faith put in.

"A regular Fourth of July room," stuttered the President when he had recovered his voice enough to speak. "Girlies, how did you do it?"

"Well," confessed Peace, meditatively chewing her finger in her endeavor to appear modest in the midst of such unstinted praise, "at first we didn't know what to do. The other girls kept talking about 'propriate colors for their complexions. Faith is all _blunette_ and she looks best in pink. Hope is all blonde and blue is her best color, while Gail and Cherry have _blunette_ hair and blonde eyes, and they chose yellow and green. I didn't know it then, but that is what they did. Anyway, they talked about the different colors till I thought we ought to have our rooms fixed up in things that fitted us. That made it hard for Allee and me, you see, 'cause she is all blonde and I'm all _blunette_. To fit her, the room would have to be all blue, and to fit me it would be all red. Gussie said it wasn't stylish to use red and blue together any more, so we didn't know what to do until one day when we were _rummelging_ through the attic we found heaps and heaps of perfectly whole bunting and two great, big flags. That decided us to make a flag room of ours, and Gussie said it was a _splen-did_ idea. So that's how it happened.

"Allee and me'd rather sleep together so's we can talk when we are awake, instead of having to holler our thoughts clear across the room from one bed to the other whenever we want to talk secrets; so we traded beds with Gussie. She said she was willing, and I always did want that bird of a bed after I saw it in her room. But the curtains wouldn't hang from its tail like I thought they would, and we--"

"Stole my Paris doll to hold 'em up with!" cried Cherry, spying for the first time the beautiful waxen image dressed to represent the G.o.ddess of Liberty, which stood on a tiny mantel over the quaint little bed, and held the bunting curtains in one hand.

"We _borrowed_ it," Peace corrected. "We couldn't very well _ask_ you 'bout it without your teasing to know why, and Allee and me didn't have a decent doll among us. Besides, you never play with it any more, and like as not grandpa or some other person that's got money will give us one of our own for Christmas. Then you can have yours back again. I guess you can wait that long, can't you? We wanted the walls striped with red and white, but Gussie thought that would look too much like a barber shop, so we just had white paper. It doesn't much matter, for the flags cover most of that wall, and Martha and George--we found them in the attic--Washington take up all the s.p.a.ce on that side under the eagle--we got that out of the gla.s.s case that stands in the barn loft.

We were going to see if we couldn't find some rugs with flags in them, but Gussie said it wasn't nice to _walk_ on our country's flag, so we chose this red carpet that used to be on this floor."

"But where did you get such cute, quaint furniture?" asked Faith who was trying the white enameled chairs one after another.

"Oh, that all came from the attic, too. Didn't cost us anything. It was a dull, ugly brown--"

"Mother's mahogany set," whispered Mrs. Campbell to the amused doctor standing at her side.

"--but a little white varnish made it just what we wanted."

"Did you do the painting?" asked Cherry, testing it with her finger to see if it stuck.

"No; we tried, but it looked so streaked we thought we sure had spoiled it. Gussie didn't have time to do a good job on it, either; so we asked Jud to help us out, and he said he would if Gussie--" There was a movement at the door, and the company glanced over their shoulders just in time to see Gussie's dress whisk out of sight down the hall. "--would give him a kiss. So you see we got that work done dirt cheap, too.

Altogether, we spent nine dollars and ninety-one cents of the money grandpa gave us. Gussie kept the list. That's what the paper and white paint and ribbons for tying back our curtains--oh, yes, and the curtains themselves came to. They are just dotted _Swish_ and we got it at a sale, so it didn't cost us much. Mrs. Grinnell says always watch for sales, 'cause lots of bargains can be picked up that way, and we remembered it this time. We spent the extra nine cents--to make just an even ten dollars--for candy to treat Gussie and Jud, seeing they wouldn't take any money for their work, but they didn't eat it all; so Allee and me had the rest."

"Did you make the curtains yourselves?" asked Cherry, the inquisitive.

"Well, mostly. Gussie cut them for us, and I held them straight in the machine while Allee made the pedal go. The seams ain't _very_ crooked, but sometimes the needle would hit a lump in the pattern and teeter out around it, in spite of all I could do. But the made-up curtains at the store cost lots more than the raw cloth and weren't half so pretty, so Gussie said she'd help us make our own. Didn't we do well?"

"You certainly did," was the unanimous verdict. "The prize is yours."

"And children," said the President impressively, as they still lingered in the quaintly furnished room; "I hope every time you enter this door, the spirit of patriotism, the love of country, will grow stronger and greater in your hearts."

"Yes, grandpa, I guess it will," answered Peace in all seriousness, "'cause we'll always be thinking of the rest of that check money which we've saved from dec'rating our room so's we could buy fire-crackers and rockets for next Fourth of July."