“That we’ll find out. But there ought to be at least twelve rooms to let. If there’s as much furniture and stuff in all as there is in these—”
“But how’ll we ever get the boarders? And how’d we cook for ’em over that open fire? It’s ridiculous!” declared ’Phemie.
“That is yet to be proved,” returned her sister, unruffled.
They pursued their investigation through the second-floor rooms. There were eight of them in the main part of the house and two in the east wing over the old doctor’s offices. The last two were only partially furnished and had been used in their grandfather’s day more for “lumber rooms” than aught else. It was evident that Dr. Phelps had demanded quiet and freedom in his own particular wing of Hillcrest.
But the eight rooms in the main part of the house on this second floor were all of good size, well lighted, and completely furnished. Some of them had probably not been slept in for fifty years, for when the girls’ mother, and even Aunt Jane, were young, Dr. Apollo Phelps’s immediate family was not a large one.
“The furniture is all old-fashioned, it is true,” Lyddy said, reflectively. “There isn’t a metal bed in the whole house—”
“And I had just as lief sleep in a coffin as in some of these high-headed carved walnut bedsteads,” declared ’Phemie.
“You don’t have to sleep in them,” responded her sister, quietly. “But some people would think it a privilege to do so.”
“They can have my share, and no charge,” sniffed the younger girl. “That bed downstairs is bad enough. And what would we do for mattresses? That’s one antique they wouldn’t stand for–believe me! Straw beds, indeed!”
“We’ll see about that. We might get some cheap elastic-felt mattresses, one at a time, as we needed them.”