"Yes, I know, but Edna keeps adding some new expense to the list till I get fairly swamped in trying to figure it all out."
"Well, my dear, perhaps you will find that you will do better to establish your own standard rather than to accept Edna's. You will not have to do as any special girl prefers to do, but as you find all the girls must do. If you find there is really no need of every expenditure which Edna thinks necessary, simply lop that off, and go without it."
Janet did not reply, for experience at boarding-school had taught her that this was an easier proceeding in theory than in practice. However, her spirits were of an elastic quality, and she did not allow forebodings to trouble her long, and when she came back that afternoon from her Aunt Minerva's, a feather bed stuffed in behind her in the buggy, she was in such a state of hilarity that she could hardly manage her new possession.
"Dicky," she called. "Dick, come help me. This is the most elusive thing I ever got hold of. It is so yielding that when I pull it in one direction it heaves up in a great billow in the other. It is the most resistless thing for anything so seemingly responsive that I ever saw."
Seeing fun ahead, Dicky answered her call, and while she pushed, he pulled, till finally the feather bed rolled out and buried Dick under its unwieldy bulk.
The boy emerged laughing. "Whew!" he cried. "I didn't know feather beds were so heavy."
"It is over forty pounds' weight, Aunt Minerva was careful to tell me, and if I hadn't interrupted her, I think she would have informed me that feathers were—I don't know how much—a pound. But I was so voluble in my thanks, and so appreciative that she couldn't get a word in edgewise. Dicky, do you suppose we shall ever be able to get this into the house? Did you ever see anything act so? Just as if it were trying on purpose to get away from us. There, that's it—"
As Dicky gave a mighty tug and moved the bed a few feet, but the next minute, he lost his purchase and fell sprawling into its midst, amid shouts of laughter.
"We'll have to leave it," said Janet, with a long drawn sigh, plumping herself down by Dicky. "We'll wait till Stuart comes home and he will help us. Let's leave it, Dicky. I'm quite worn out with tugging. You can drive Dolly around to the stable and this can stay right here. Let us hope that no strangers will call this afternoon to see the family feather bed airing on the front porch. There are some advantages in living a distance from town; one can be independent."
She watched Dicky drive away with the buggy, but retained her seat in the middle of the feathers, till suddenly remembering that time was short, she sprang up and ran to the room where her mother and Miss Roxy still sat.