'My! ain't he cunning?' said Archie, stroking the soft fur with his finger, while the others crowded round to look. 'And so clean, too; he looks as if you had just loaned him new from a store, and he's as fat as butter. He's been feeding up for this, I reckon. What shall I do with him?'
'Oh! can't we keep him for a pet?' implored Peggy, with an eye on the ever-increasing menagerie. 'We could get nuts and acorns and things for him, and I've no doubt he would eat corn, too.'
'I guess he'll want to sleep now right away till spring, like our grizzlies do in the fall.'
'Let's wrap him up again,' said Lilian. 'I'm sure he'll catch cold, poor dear! and we'll put him in a snug corner of the orchard, where we can look at him now and then, and in the spring perhaps he'll wake up.'
As this seemed the most humane suggestion, Master Dormouse was tucked up in bed once more, and, still protesting, was carried to a sunny bank under an apple-tree, and stowed away under a protecting clump of leaves, where his plaintive voice gradually subsided, and he settled down for five months of oblivion, to ignore the winter frosts and storms until the April sunshine should tempt him out of his lair.
The moss lining to Sky Cottage was a great success, Archie arranged willow withs in a neat pattern over it, to keep it from falling down, and everyone agreed that it looked charming. Furnishing was the next consideration, and the attics and lumber-room at the Abbey were ransacked for any treasures they might afford. A few broken chairs, and a rickety gate-legged table were soon mended by Archie's clever fingers. Lilian hunted out an old piece of carpet and a tablecloth, and the place looked so comfortable that the children, fired by Archie's accounts of the log-cabins in the Rocky Mountains, longed to put in a cooking-stove and emigrate there altogether. They decided to have quite a garden on the platform next spring, and to grow seeds in pots, and persuade nasturtiums and canary-creepers to climb up the walls, and they made a beginning by hauling up a box of soil, and planting some ivy, which they hoped in time would cover the whole roof.
Peggy and Bobby would have been quite content to go on adding a nail here or a shelf there, and further making improvements, but Archie, now that the chief work was over, found his interest cooling, and having got hold of a book on 'Balloons and Air-Ships,' proposed no less daring a scheme than that he should construct a flying machine, and start it from the platform. Father, however, getting to hear of the project, forbade it so emphatically that the disgusted aeronaut was obliged to give way, and consoled himself by constructing a fire-balloon out of gay strips of pink and green tissue-paper, which, ignited by methylated spirits, was to be set off with great effect on Peggy's birthday.
As some slight amends for his disappointment, Lilian proposed that they should have a grand housewarming at Sky Cottage on Saturday afternoon, and invite Father to tea in the sanctum. The rest giving a hearty and vigorous approval, she set to work to bake cakes in honour of the occasion, preserving such a halo of mystery round her cookery that the others were consumed with curiosity, and felt ready for any surprises.
There were a great many preparations to be made when the eventful afternoon arrived. The hut had to be swept and dusted, late flowers to be gleaned from the garden to decorate the tea-table, cups and saucers packed up and conveyed in baskets, together with the little tin kettle and the methylated spirit lamp, as they could scarcely light a fire on the platform like they did for picnic teas in the woods. Archie hung up a Japanese lantern in the doorway, and fixed a Union-Jack on one side, and the star-spangled banner of the United States on the other, and Peggy found enough Michaelmas daisies and white asters to put a wreath all round the railing of the veranda, which rather suggested harvest decorations, but looked very festive all the same.
They had brought a clean tablecloth from the kitchen drawer, and set the table quite artistically, with a jam-pot full of flowers in the centre, and little plates full of cakes grouped round it. Lilian put out a very tempting looking selection of rock-buns and ginger-nuts, and Archie produced a tin of real Scotch shortbread and some macaroons, a contribution from his aunt; so with bread-and-butter, and a pot of the newly-made blackberry jam, there was quite a noble display. But Lilian had kept her surprise in the background, and it was only when all was ready that she opened a basket, and proudly drew out her masterpiece, a substantial-looking cake, with a cut-paper frill, and white icing on the top, on which in pink sugary letters were inscribed the words: 'Success to Sky Cottage!' Certainly some of the capitals were a little staggery, and the 'y' had strayed into the pink border round the edge, but it was felt to be a triumph of culinary art all the same, and gave quite a grace to the table.