“But this is a great idea, a really great one, because it includes all the little ones, like Milton’s universe in the crescent moon; don’t you remember?”
“My goody, Polly! But it must be a corker!”—and Dan was all attention.
Now Polly, it is needless to repeat, was a young person of ideas; that was her strong point, and Dan at least considered her a marvel of ingenuity and invention. Their tiny sitting-room, where Dan slept, was a witness to her taste and originality. There were picturesque shelves which Dan had made in accordance with her directions; there were cheesecloth window-curtains, with rustic boughs in place of poles; there were barrels standing bottom 158 upward for tables, draped with ancient “duds”—a changeable-silk skirt of her mother’s over one, a moth-eaten camel’s-hair shawl over another. The crack in the only mirror which a munificent landlord had provided was concealed by a kinikinick vine; a piece of Turkey-red at five cents a yard, their one bit of extravagance, converted Dan’s cot-bed into a canopy of state. And having heard Dan chant the praises of her “ideas” with gratifying persistence for a month past, Polly had begun to wonder whether they might not be turned to account.
“What’s the latest idea, Polly?” Dan asked, seizing a dripping handful of what they were pleased to call their “family plate.”
“Well, Dan, I want you to paint something more on my sign. Only two words; it won’t take you long.”
“What two words?”
“Also Ideas!”
Dan reflected a moment, and then he proceeded to dance a jig of delight, wildly waving his dish-cloth about Polly’s head. 159
“Polly, you beat the world!” he cried.
A house-painter lived next door, from whom Dan borrowed paint and brushes, and before they slept the old sign was further decorated with two magic words done in brilliant scarlet. The inscription now read: