“Is she going to make a visit this time?” inquired Ethel Brown.

“She has come for a long visit now. She has a commission to decorate a house in Englewood. It’s going to take her several weeks, and then she wants to rest and do some studying and to make the rounds of the decorators in the city, so it will be several months before she goes back again.”

“That’s nice,” said Ethel Blue politely, and she was glad she had thought so because Margaret said at once, “We think it’s splendid. She’s a young aunt, lots and lots younger than Mother, and James and I think she’s loads of fun.”

“What was her message to me?” asked Dorothy.

“O, we were telling her about the United Service Club and the things we did—sending gifts to the war orphans and celebrating holidays and our plans for helping some poor women and children in the summer and for taking care of the Belgian baby. She was awfully interested and said she felt as if she knew all of you people and the Watkinses quite well, we talked about you so much. Then we told her about Dorothy’s house, and how Mrs. Smith had said we might all give our opinions about the decorating, and she asked us to tell you that she’d be very glad indeed to act as consulting decorator when you come to the inside work.”

“Why, that’s awfully sweet of her!” exclaimed Dorothy. “Mother isn’t going to have a regular decorator, and I know she’ll be immensely pleased to have Miss—what is your aunt’s name?”

“Graham; she’s our Aunt Daisy!”

“—to have Miss Graham give us advice and ‘check up’ on our suggestions.”

“By the time your house is ready for that part she will have finished her Englewood house; but she said she’d be glad to come over and see the house and the plans any time when she was free for the afternoon, and she hoped you’d consult her about everything you wanted to.”

“Daisy is a pretty name, isn’t it?” Ethel Blue murmured to herself. “I wish one of us was named Daisy.”

“Her name is really Margaret; I’m named after her. Daisy is the nickname for Margaret, you know.”

“It’s a lovely name,” said Ethel Blue again.

“And please tell Miss Daisy that I think she’s the finest ever, and Mother will think so, too, when I tell her about this,” added Dorothy.

“And do ask her to come over to one of the U. S. C. meetings when we happen to be doing something that will interest her,” concluded Helen, who was the president of the club.

CHAPTER III
THE CLUB SELECTS THE BENCHES

It seemed to Dorothy and the Ethels that the outside of Sweetbrier Lodge, as Mrs. Smith had determined to call her house, went up with remarkable speed, but that the inside would never be done—never! Every day the girls walked down the road after school, and stood and surveyed the general appearance from the sidewalk and from across the street and sometimes they went on to Mrs. Emerson’s and discussed vigorously as to whether the view of the corner of the house that was to be seen now would still be seen after the leaves came out or whether the house would be entirely concealed by the foliage.

“That’s ‘one of the things no feller knows,’” Mr. Emerson quoted. “We shall have to wait and see.”

“We can get an idea how it is to look from the road,” said Ethel Brown.

“Only there’ll be a lot of planting,” Dorothy explained. “There’ll be a hedge along the street and a lot of shrubs on the knoll and the house will be covered with vines in the course of time.”

“That’s another good point about concrete,” declared Mr. Emerson; “vines don’t injure it as they do brick.”

“We’ll have it entirely covered, then,” laughed Dorothy.

“I thought it was to be a bungalow,” said Mrs. Emerson. “Your mother has always spoken of it as a bungalow, but the plans I saw the men following the other day when I went up the hill to take a look at things, seemed to me like a two story house.”

“Mother changed her mind,” said Dorothy. “She thought a bungalow would be too crowded now that we have little Belgian Elisabeth with us, so the house is going to have two stories and an attic.”

“The U. S. C. couldn’t get on without Dorothy’s attic,” smiled Ethel Brown, for almost all of the presents for the Christmas Ship had been made in the attic of Dorothy’s present abiding place, and the Club had had many meetings there.

“There’s nothing like having a well-thought-out plan before you attempt building,” said Mr. Emerson, “and that your mother had.”

“She tried to think of every possible need, Ayleesabet’s as well as our own,” continued Dorothy, using the pronunciation that the Belgian baby had given her own name.

“She has a good contractor in Anderson.”

“He didn’t make the very lowest bid,” said Dorothy. “There was one man who was lower, but he was such a lot lower that Mother thought there must be something the matter with the quality of the material he used, or that he employed workmen so poor that they might not do their work well, so she didn’t consider that offer at all.”

“She was very wise,” commended Mr. Emerson. “He might have spoiled the whole thing and have cost her more money in the end by turning out a poor job.”

While the building was going on and before the inside work was done the girls spent a good deal of time in planning for the furnishing of the garden. The flower and vegetable beds had all been arranged some weeks before and many of them had been planted, but the artistic part of the garden had been left until there should be time to devote to it. Mrs. Smith had promised Dorothy that she should have the choice of the garden furniture, reserving for herself a veto power if her daughter chose anything that seemed to her entirely unsuitable.

“Not that I expect to use it,” she said, smiling at the girls who were listening to her.

The selection of the benches and tables and trellises was made a subject of attention by the whole United Service Club. A meeting was called in the partly begun garden so that they might have the “lie of the land” before them as they talked. Dorothy took with her a number of catalogues from which to select or to gather ideas.

“We’ve got a good shelter of large trees already provided for us,” she said as they all seated themselves in such shade as the young leaves made.

“There ought to be a fine large settee under it where we can have Club meetings all summer, no matter how warm it is,” urged Tom Watkins with wise foresight. Tom and his sister, Della, came out from New York for the club gatherings, and the prospect of meeting out of doors instead of in the attic, which was delightful in winter but not so attractive in warm weather, made him offer this shrewd suggestion.

“In the first place,” said Dorothy again, opening the various catalogues and spreading them on the grass where they could all see them, “don’t you think it would be pretty to have all the chairs and benches of one pattern? Or don’t you?”

“I think it would,” answered Ethel Brown, examining the pages carefully before she made her decision.

“Would what?”

“I should like them all alike. It would be messy to have a lot of different patterns.”

Ethel Blue, who had a good deal of artistic sense and ability, nodded her agreement with this belief. They all came to the same conclusion.

“Then, let’s pick out the pattern,” said Dorothy, who had an orderly mind.

“Something plain, so the visitor’s eye won’t be drawn to the benches instead of the flowers,” recommended Helen. “Suppose we were sitting here, for instance, and looking toward the flower beds—there will be some tables and chairs between us and the flowers, probably—”

“If the seeds will only grow,” Dorothy sighed comically.

“—and we want to forget them and not have them intrude on our attention.”

“Correct!” James Hancock thumped the ground by way of applause.

“What’s the plainest pattern there is?” asked Della, extending her hand for a book.

“That one—but that’s too plain,” remonstrated Ethel Blue. “That’s so plain that it draws your attention as much as if it were all fussed up.”

They laughed at her disgust and urged her to choose the next plainest.

“I rather think this one with cross bars is pretty,” she decided seriously. “You wouldn’t get tired of that—especially if they’re all painted dark green so you won’t see them much.”

“You girls seem to want to have invisible furniture,” grinned Roger. “Me for something more substantial.”

“These will be substantial enough—they’re made of cypress,” retorted Helen, “but you don’t want to see a lot of chairs and benches when you come out to observe the beauties of nature, my child.”

“I can bay the moon on a white bench with an elaborate pattern just as musically as on a plain, dark green one,” insisted Roger.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” urged Ethel Brown, which crushing remark from a younger sister was rewarded by a hair-pull effectively delivered by Roger.

“Yow!” squealed Ethel.

“Now who’s baying the moon?” inquired her brother.

“Let’s decide on the cross-barred kind,” decreed Dorothy.

“The Lady of the Garden has made her decision,” announced James, tooting through his hands as if he were a herald making an announcement. “Now for the shapes. How many are you going to have, Lady?”

“I think there ought to be a very large bench that would hold almost all the Club, and then one or two smaller benches and two or three chairs and two small tables for lemonade and cocoa.”

“And to hold the Secretary’s book when she’s writing,” urged Ethel Blue who held the office of scribe and had not always found herself conveniently situated to do her work.

“Here’s a bully bench for the whole U. S. C.,” cried Tom. “It’s curved so it will fit right under this semi-circle of trees as if it were made for this very spot.”

He held up the picture of a wide bench with two wings. It was greeted with applause.

“When that is made in the pattern we chose it will be as pretty as any one could ask for,” Dorothy decided.

“And painted green,” added Ethel Blue, at which they all laughed. “I’m serious about the green,” she insisted. “Don’t you see what I mean, Dorothy?” she continued, appealing to the person who was to have the final decision on the question.

“I think you’re right,” replied Dorothy. “Don’t mind what they say. Write down one of those, Miss Secretary, and one of these right-angled ones—don’t you all of you think that’s a comfy one?”

They did, and they also approved of the single bench and the chairs and the small tables.

“They won’t be all jammed up in this corner, of course,” Dorothy explained gravely, “but when we have a Club meeting we can bring them together if we want to and room enough for everybody.”

“I thought we were all to sit on the big bench,” objected Tom with an air of deep disappointment.

“So we shall if you boys are too lazy to pull the other benches and chairs over here,” answered Dorothy. “If we have plenty we can arrange them any way we want to.”

“What about trellises?” inquired Ethel Blue who had been continuing her researches in the catalogues. “Here are some beauties. Don’t you think you’ll need some?”

“She certainly will if that Dorothy Perkins rambler rose gets busy as it ought to,” decided Roger.

“There’ll be a lot of vines and tall things if they’ll only grow,” said Dorothy hopefully. “I think there ought to be one or two flat ones and an arbor that will be a trellis.”

“Here’s an arbor that you can walk through or sit down in while you admire your plants, and you will be protected from the sun,” Tom pointed out.

“And that same one with a lattice back and a bench inside makes a pretty good imitation of a summer house,” suggested Ethel Brown.

“We’ll have one apiece of those, then.”

“Count up and see how much stuff you’re planning to order,” Roger suggested. “You’ve got a huge big place to set them in here but you don’t want too much wood work, nevertheless.”

They came to the conclusion that there were not too many for the size of the grounds and were well satisfied with their choice.

“Do you see how well we’re going to see the house from here?” Dorothy asked.

They all agreed that it would be very pretty from that point.

“My idea is that the garden must look well from the house,” said Dorothy. “Mother wants a pergola somewhere. Don’t you think the right place for it would be covering a walk leading from the house to here?”

“That’s a great notion,” approved Tom. “As you came toward the garden you’d have a—what do you call the effect—where you see a view framed in somehow?”

“Do you mean a vista?” asked Margaret.

“That’s it. There would be a vista of the garden.”

“It will be lovely!” Helen said decisively. “And I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a trellis framing a view of the woods toward Grandfather Emerson’s; that would be pretty, too.”

Dorothy went over to look at the drawing that Helen held up to her and decided straightway that it was worth trying. They all went toward the upper side of the garden where young peach trees were planted on the northern slope of the ridge and chose a spot which gave a charming picture of the adjoining field with its brook and the woods beyond.

“The birds are coming along pretty well now,” announced James who had been lying on his back gazing up into the branches swaying in the upper breeze.

“Are you going to build any bird houses, Dorothy?” asked Ethel Brown.

“I suppose we’ll have to if we want them to stay late in the season or all winter,” replied her cousin. “But bird houses are so ugly.”

“Not the modern ones,” interposed James eagerly. “You make them out of pieces of the trunks of trees with the bark on, and you fix up a platform with a stick on it that has spikes to hang suet on and they aren’t a bit conspicuous and lots of birds will stay all winter that otherwise would go south before the regular Palm Beach rush.”

“We must have some then,” Dorothy made up her mind. “Say ‘Robert of Lincoln’?” she begged Ethel Brown, who was the Club’s reciter, “and then we’ll go home and have some cocoa and cookies.”

“Do, Ethel Brown;” “Come on,” were the cries from all the U. S. C. members as they settled themselves to listen to Bryant’s charming verses.

CHAPTER IV
CHRISTOPHER FINDS A NEW LODGING

There was trouble in chicken circles. The young chicks that the Ethels and Dorothy had helped Dicky move from the incubator to the brooder were making rapid progress toward broiler size, and had been transferred to a run of their own where they scratched and dozed happily through the long spring days. Dicky and Ayleesabet, the Belgian baby, were examining them on a late June afternoon. Dicky had brought with him his old friend, the turtle, which had not yet been moved to Dorothy’s pool, since his present owner wanted to wait until his aunt’s house was occupied before he let so cherished a possession go where he might slip away and his loss, perhaps, be unnoticed.

“When you’re living right there tho you can watch Chrithtopher Columbuth all the time I’ll let you have him,” Dicky had promised Dorothy.

“I see myself in my mind’s eye sitting side of the tank all day and night holding the turtle’s paw!” Dorothy exclaimed when she told the Ethels of Dicky’s decision.

Perhaps because he felt that he was soon to be parted from his old comrade Dicky’s affection for Christopher seemed to increase and he developed a habit of carrying him about, sometimes in his hand and sometimes in a little basket which Dorothy had made for Christopher’s Christmas gift. To-day he had brought him to the chicken yard in his hand and had laid him down on the ground while he examined his flock and called Ayleesabet’s attention to the beauties of this or the other miniature hen.

Elisabeth’s words were few, but she managed to make her wants and opinions known with surprising ease, and she never had the least trouble about expressing her emotions. Her little playmate had learned this and therefore when he heard loud howls behind his back he knew that it was not anger that was disturbing the usually placid baby, but terror. Shriek after shriek arose although it seemed to him that he turned about almost instantly.

He was not in time, however, to prevent her from being thrown down in some mysterious way, or to see the cause of the commotion among the chickens. They fluttered and squawked and ran to and fro, tumbling over each other and running with perfect indifference over the baby as she lay yelling on the ground. Her blue romper legs came up every now and then out of the mass of chicken feathers, and their kicking only added to the disturbance and confusion of the chicks.

The hubbub did not go unnoticed. Roger ran from his vegetable garden to see what was the matter; Helen appeared from her garden of wild flowers; Miss Merriam, the baby’s caretaker, ran from the porch where she was talking with the Ethels who were waiting for the out-of-town members of the U. S. C. to arrive. At the moment when all these people were rushing to the rescue, Margaret and James Hancock, just off the Glen Point street car, hurried from the corner, and Della and Tom Watkins, arrived by the latest train from New York, burst open the gate in their excitement.

To meet all these inquiries came Dicky, tugging after him by the leg, the baby, howling pitifully by this time as she was dragged over the grass. Miss Merriam seized her and hugged her tight.

“What’s the matter with the little darling precious?” she crooned.

Ayleesabet gathered herself together courageously and her sobbing died away.

“What was it all about?” Miss Merriam inquired of Dicky.

“I don’t know,” replied Dicky, his own lip trembling as he tried to understand the rapid, thrilling experience.

“Tell Gertrude what happened,” Miss Merriam urged the baby, wiping away her tears and setting her down on her feet on the grass just as Christopher Columbus bumped his way over the sod to join them.

Ayleesabet’s conversational powers were not equal to the explanation, but her little hands could tell a great deal, and her caretaker was skilled in interpreting them. She pointed to the turtle and called him by the nickname that Dicky had given him, “Chriththy”; then she spread out her fat little fingers and waved a forward motion with her hand.

“Chrissy stuck out his head and legs and walked ahead,” interpreted Miss Merriam. “Where was he, Dicky?”

“In the chicken yard.”

Elisabeth was kneeling beside the turtle now, tapping his shell with a chubby forefinger; after which she rolled over on her back and screamed.

Miss Merriam shook her head at this demonstration, but Dicky translated it out of his previous experience.

“The chickenth hit hith thhell with their beakth, and, when he moved they were frightened and knocked her over,” he guessed.

“That’s just what happened, I believe,” said Roger, setting Elisabeth on her feet once more. “I’ve seen the chickens run like anything from Christopher, and probably they ran between the baby’s legs and upset her and then scampered all over her. I don’t wonder she was scared.”

Christopher gave no testimony in the case. He may have been overcome by the confusion; at any rate he withdrew into his shell and preserved a studied calm from which he could not be roused.

“I think you can have him,” said Dicky suddenly to Dorothy, who had come through the fence at the corner where her yard joined her cousins’. “He botherth me.”

“Very well,” said Dorothy. “Let’s take him over to Sweetbrier Lodge this afternoon. We’re all going over there anyway—bring him along, Dicky.”

So the procession set forth, Dicky and his shell-covered friend at the fore, escorted by all the rest of the United Service Club, while Miss Merriam and her charge, whose walking ability had not yet developed much speed, brought up the rear.

As they all toiled up the hill to Sweetbrier Lodge Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Morton came out on the veranda of the new house to watch them.

“Has anything happened?” called Mrs. Smith as soon as they were within earshot.

“We’re just bringing Christopher over to his new home,” Dorothy explained to her mother.

quoted Mrs. Morton. “I used to think that that meant a turtle like Dicky’s and not a turtle-dove,” and the two mothers laughed and disappeared within the house while the younger people kept on to the garden and the concrete pool.

When they reached there Dicky gazed at the pool in dismay.

“There ithn’t any water in it,” he objected, shaking his head doubtfully.

“We can reach it with the hose and fill it up in no time,” his cousin explained.

“It’ll run out of the hole,” pointing to the hole made by the broomstick when the concrete was soft.

“We’ll put a plug in the hole.”

“He hasn’t any log to sit on.”

“Roger will find him a stick.”

“I don’t want to leave him here all alone,” screamed Dicky, overcome by a renewal of his former misgivings. Casting himself on the ground he hugged his treasure to his breast and waved his legs in the air.

“You can take him back again if you want to,” Ethel Brown reminded him, “but you know he’s always getting into trouble with the chickens now. He seems to run away every day.”

As the memory of the latest encounter between Christopher and the chicks with Elisabeth’s overthrow, flashed before him, Dicky howled again. There seemed to be no haven on earth for his favorite.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” suggested Dorothy soothingly. “Let’s go down to the house. The laundry is finished, and we can put him in one of the tubs there until this pool is fixed to suit you.”

“It’th dark in the laundry,” objected Dicky again.

“Not in this laundry. You see,” explained Dorothy, sitting down beside the sufferer and patting him gently, “the house is built on the side of a hill, so the laundry has full sized windows and is bright and cheerful though it’s on a level with the cellar. I think Christopher will like it.”

Dicky stood up, his face smeared with tears, but a new interest gleaming in his reddened eyes.

“Come on,” urged Ethel Blue, tactfully; “let’s all go and see if we can’t make him comfortable.”

“I’ll pick up a piece of log for him as we go along,” promised Roger, and he and Tom and James went off towards the woods to look for just the right thing.

“What a perfectly dandy cellar. Why, it’s as bright as the upper part of the house!” exclaimed Margaret as the procession invaded the lower regions of the Lodge.

“Isn’t it fine!” agreed Dorothy. “The workmen have cleared it all up, and, if this part were all, it might be lived in right off.”

“The whitewashed walls make it look bright.”

“And the large windows! I never saw such windows in a cellar.”

“Mother says I may put little cheesecloth curtains in them.”

“Curtains will look sweet the day after you take in the winter supply of coal,” grinned Roger, who appeared with the other boys, carrying Christopher’s bit of log.

“They won’t look dirty, if that’s what you mean by ‘sweet,’” Dorothy retorted. “Look—” and she opened the door of a coal bin—“the coal is put in through a concrete chute that leads directly into the bin and the bin is entirely shut off from the cellar. No dust floats out of that, young man.”

“How do you get the coal out?”

“Here’s a little door that slides up and catches. You notice that the floor of the bin isn’t level with the cellar floor; it’s raised to make it a comfortable height for shoveling. Under it is the place for the logs for the open fires. There are two bins, one for furnace coal and the other for the coal for the stoves, and the kindling wood goes in this third one. They are all together and large enough but not too large, and the furnace coal is near the boiler and the small coal is near the laundry and the wood is close to the dumb waiter that will take that and the clean clothes upstairs.”

“All as compact as a cut-out puzzle,” approved Roger. “I take off my hat to this arrangement.”

“Thank you,” courtesied Dorothy. “Mother and I worked that out together, and we’re rather pleased with it ourselves.”

“What do you do with the ashes?” asked Roger, who took care of several furnaces in the winter time, and therefore made his examination as a specialist.

“Put them down that chute with a swinging door and into a covered can. It will be hard for the ashes to fly there.”

“This is the concrete floor we superintended,” said Helen, looking at it closely.

“All smooth and well drained with rounded edges. It’s going to be as clean as a whistle down here. See the metal ceiling? That’s for fire prevention, and so is the sprinkler system and there’s a metal covered door at the head of the cellar stairs.”

“There seems to be a lot of machinery for a small house,” observed James as he carried his examination around the space.

“Mother said she couldn’t afford luxuries but she could afford comforts and these are some of the comforts,” smiled Dorothy.

“Not very pretty comforts,” remarked Ethel Blue dryly.

“‘Handsome is as handsome does,’” quoted her cousin. “When these things get to working you won’t care whether they’re beautiful to look at or not.”

“What’s the heating system—steam or hot water?” asked Tom, standing before the boiler.

“Hot water. They say it’s more convenient for a small house because you don’t have to keep up such a big fire all the time.”

“That’s so; in steam heating there has to be fire enough to make steam, anyway, doesn’t there?”

“And when the steam in the pipes cools it turns to water and dribbles away, but in the hot water system there will be some heat in the outside of your radiator as long as the water inside has any warmth at all.”

“How does the expense compare?” inquired James who was always interested in the financial side of all questions.

“The hot water system is said to be cheaper,” replied Dorothy.

“Why are there so many pipes?” asked Ethel Brown, looking with a puzzled air at the collection before her.

“Hear me lecture on heating!” laughed Dorothy; “but I did study it all out with Mother, so I think I’m telling you the truth about it. There have to be two sets of pipes, one to take the hot water to the radiators and the other to bring it back after it has cooled.”

“There seem to be big pipes and small ones.”

“Mains and branch pipes they call them. The man who put these in said this house was especially well arranged for piping because it wouldn’t take any more pressure to force the water into one radiator than another. He says there’s going to be a good even heat all over everywhere.”

“There isn’t a lot of difference between radiators for steam and those for hot water, is there?” asked Ethel Blue.

“No, you have to put something with water in it on top of both kinds to make the air of the room moist. Here you have to open the air valve yourself and let out the air that accumulates in the radiator. In the steam ones they are automatically worked by steam.”

“There can’t be much air in the hot water radiator, I should think,” said Margaret thoughtfully.

“There isn’t. You only have to open the valve two or three times in the course of the winter. The biggest difference is that the hot water system has to have an expansion tank.”

“What’s that?”

“Why, when steam is shut up it just presses harder than ever, but when water is heated it swells and it’s likely to burst open whatever it’s in, so there has to be an open tank up at the top of the house where it can go and swell around all it wants to,” laughed Dorothy.

“What are these affairs?” inquired Margaret who had been looking at two other arrangements near by.

“That one is a gas thing for heating water in summer when there isn’t any other fire. There’s a tiny flame burning all the time, and when the water is drawn out of the tank the flame becomes larger automatically and heats up a new supply.”

“That’s a fine scheme; you don’t have to heat the house up and yet the water is always ready. What’s the other?”

“That’s to burn up the garbage. In the kitchen there’s a tiny closet for the garbage pail. It’s ventilated from the outside. There is a thing that burns the garbage and makes it heat the water, but Mother decided that we had so small a family that there might be days when there wouldn’t be fuel enough to make a decent fire, so we’d better have the gas heater.”

“The other would be economical for a hotel,” observed prudent James.

“Here’s the refrigerating plant,” Dorothy said, motioning toward a tank and a set of pipes and a small motor.

“Going to cut out the iceman?” grinned Tom.

“We’re going to be independent of him. Mother doesn’t like natural ice, any way; she went over to the Rosemont pond last winter when the men were cutting and the ice was so dirty she made up her mind right off that she didn’t want any more of it. This thing will chill the refrigerator up in the kitchen and pipes from it are going under the flooring of the drawing room and the dining room so they can be made comfy in summer.”

“Hope you can cut them off in winter!” and Roger gave a tremendous shiver.

“We can,” Dorothy reassured him.

“Good work!”

“It makes small cakes of ice too, so we can always have plenty for the Club lemonades.”

“I don’t know but I think that’s more useful than the heating arrangements,” approved plump little Della.

“That’s because you’re fat,” responded Tom with brotherly frankness. “You think you suffer most in summer, but if you didn’t have any heat in winter you’d change your cry.”

“I suppose I should, but I do nearly melt in warm weather,” sighed Della.

“We don’t mean to if we can help it,” laughed Dorothy. “This is the air-washing arrangement over here,” went on Dorothy, as she continued her round of the cellar.

“Air-washing!” was the general chorus.

“As long as we have a little motor we’re going to make it useful. There’s a small fan here that brings in the fresh air. It goes into a ‘spray chamber’ and is washed free of dust with water that is cold in summer and warm in winter.”

“I see clearly that the temperature of this castle is going to be just right,” exclaimed Roger.

“After the air leaves the spray chamber it goes over some plates that take all the moisture out of it, and then the fan forces it through the pipes that go into every room.”

“Are those the little gratings I noticed in all the rooms the other day?” asked Ethel Blue.

“Those are the ventilators. Don’t you think we’ve made everything very compact here? All these pipes take up very little room.”

“Mighty little!” commended Roger. “And they’re all open so you can get at them without any trouble.”

“Here’s a scheme Patrick suggested,” laughed Dorothy, pointing upward to what looked like a concrete shelf with an upturned border almost at the top of the cellar wall.

“What’s it for?” asked Ethel Brown.

“That shelf is directly underneath the seat beside the fireplace in the drawing room. Patrick plans to save himself the trouble of carrying up the logs by piling them on this shelf down here. Then he lifts the cover of the seat upstairs and all he has to do is to take out his wood and make his fire!”

“That certainly is a cracker-jack labor saving device! Good for Patrick!”

“He’s especially tickled with the vacuum cleaner run by this same little motor. You ought to hear him talk about it.”

“What are these cupboards for?” asked Helen who had been exploring.

“That one with the glass doors is for preserves, and the place in the other corner that has a fence for its two inside walls is a place for cleaning silver and shoes and lamps and brasses. See—there are cupboards along the inside of the fence. They hold all the cleaning materials, and the cleaner can sit in a swing chair in the middle and use a different part of the concrete shelf against the two cellar walls for boots or fire-irons or knives and forks or lamps. At one end is a sink so he can have what water he needs for his work and he can wash his hands when he turns from one kind of cleaning to another.”

“And he isn’t all smothered up in a small room. Who thought of that?”

“Patrick and I worked that out together. Patrick has lots of ingenuity.”

“I should say you had, too!” exclaimed Della, admiringly.

“Here’s where Dorothy does her carpentering,” cried James.

“I may move that bench up in the attic later,” explained Dorothy, “but I thought I’d leave it here until the house was done, because there are apt to be little things to be hammered and nailed for some time, I suppose.”

“How long are you going to be before you fikth a plathe for Chrithopher Columbuth?” demanded Dicky, whose patience was entirely exhausted.

“We’ll make him happy right here and now,” answered Dorothy briskly, throwing open the door of the laundry.

The sun shone gayly on the concrete floor and the room was a cheerful spot. An electric washing machine stood ready although covered tubs were built against the wall for use in emergencies, and at one side was a drying closet. There were numerous plugs against the wall for the attachment of pressing irons.

“What’s this?” asked Ethel Brown, lifting a cover of a hopper at the base of a chute.

“That’s the chute for soiled clothes. The other end is on the bedroom floor, and it saves carrying.”

“That’s as good as Patrick’s log device!” smiled Helen.

“Shall I put Christopher’s log in here?” asked Roger, lifting the top of one of the stationary tubs.

“Yes, fix it so he can crawl up and sit in the sunshine where it strikes the tub. We’ll have to draw some water from the hydrant outside; the water isn’t turned on in the house yet.”

Roger picked up a pail that was standing near by and went up the cellar stairs two at a time.

“Now, sir,” he said to Dicky when he came back, “I’ll lift you up and you can put Christopher into his new abode.”

Dicky deposited his charge gently on the log and he lay there poking out his head to enjoy the sunshine.

“Did you bring some bits of meat for him?” Roger asked.

For answer Dicky turned out of the pocket of his rompers a handful of chopped beef.

“Certainly unappetizing in appearance,” said Tom, wrinkling his nose, “but I dare say Christopher is not particular.”