“Let’s make the boys clear it up,” suggested Betty.
“Good for you!” cried Jessie. “You do have brilliant ideas sometimes, don’t you, Betsy? Those scapegraces have imposed themselves upon us, and they may as well be put to use.”
“Where are they? I don’t see them,” said Nan, peering under the tables and chairs.
“Oh, they’ll be here soon enough; don’t worry,” said Millicent, who was calmly eating a late breakfast. “They are but henchmen; let us command them. They should be only too glad to do our bidding.”
Very soon after, with a wild war-whoop, the boys appeared.
“What a lazy lot!” they cried, looking at the table. “Why, we had breakfast hours ago, and we’ve had a swim and a run, and we’ve called on Aunt Molly, and—oh, I say, give us some jam?”
“Not until you work for it,” said Millicent, putting the jam-jar in the cupboard and standing in front of the closed door. “You see the disarray of our household gods. Well, restore this palace to its original exquisite tidiness and order, and you shall have—a spoonful of jam apiece.”
“A spoonful!” cried Harry Bond. “A jarful, you mean! But come on, fellows; let’s fire out this trash.”
There were ten boys, for the eight who came down from Middleton had promptly annexed the two Hillis boys; and the rapidity with which Hilarity Hall was put in order was suggestive of a Western cyclone.
“You girls vamoose,” shouted Roger Hale. “Run upstairs, or outdoors, or across the street, or somewhere, and quick!”