“Oh,” said McConnell, with a shrug of his shoulders, “I didn’t think they had girls in a club. I knew they had them in societies, and associations, and lodges, and circles,—but not in clubs.”
“Pshaw!” said Owen, “girls belong to everything nowadays.”
“I don’t suppose we need worry,” said Allan, “they may not think it is nice enough to join. We’ve got to fix this place up a good deal before many will want to join. Don’t you think we ought to paint it a little?”
“I think we ought to clean it a little anyway,” was Owen’s opinion, “clear out the dust from the front room. You’ve got the dark-room all right. Suppose we have another tap and sink, so that two of us can work at the same time if we want to?”
“Good idea,” assented Allan, “and an extra lamp. Then we will want another fixing-tray—a large one; another rack; and I was looking at that washing-box Wincher has; what do you say to that?”
“I have been thinking,” said Owen, “that we might have a gas meter put in and use these gas connections. Then we could run a line of pipe over the two sinks, and use gas in sliding-front red-glass boxes or something of that sort.”
Allan and McConnell both thought this was a capital idea. “And what do you think,” asked Allan, “of boxing in the head of the stairs, so as to keep out the light coming from the door in the daytime? We should have to do that anyhow to keep it warm here in winter.”
“That’s so,” said Owen.
Allan drew from his pocket a piece of paper covered with pencil lines. “This is what I really was thinking of doing here,” he said. The boys studied the diagram in which Allan had planned certain improvements in the dark-room, and had set off the smaller of the two rooms on the front for a printing room.
“Just the thing!” was Owen’s comment.