"She wouldn't care how much we made it, but she wouldn't let me make it at home, I know, because she hates a mess."
"I don't believe Grandma would like it either," said Marjorie, with a sudden conviction; "it is awful messy, and it smells pretty strong. But I'll tell you what, girls: let's take it all right to 'Breezy Inn.' Then we can put it to soak right away. We can get water from the brook, and there are plenty of pails and things there to make the extract in."
"We can call it The Breezy Extract," said Stella; "that'll look pretty painted on the labels."
"Breezy Extract is silly," said Molly; "Breezy-Inn Extract is prettier."
"All right," said Stella, good-naturedly. "Come on, I'm in a hurry to begin. I'll paint the labels, while you girls make the stuff."
So they trudged across the field to Breezy Inn, dumped their heaps of pennyroyal into the dumb-waiter, and themselves scrambled gayly up the rope ladder.
Almost before Molly and Midge had pulled up their somewhat odorous burden, Stella had seated herself at the table to work at the labels. The child was devoted to work of this sort, and was soon absorbed in designing artistic letters to adorn the bottles.
Midge and Molly worked away with a will. Unheeding their pretty summer frocks, and, indeed, there was little use now for care in that direction, they brought water from the brook, hauled it up the dumbwaiter, and filled several good-sized receptacles with steeping pennyroyal flowers.
Their work finished, they were anxious to start for home at once and begin a search for the bottles, but Stella begged them to stay a little longer until she should have finished the design she was making.
So Midge and Molly wandered out on the veranda, and amused themselves by jerking the rope ladder up and down. By a clever mechanical contrivance the ladder went up and down something on the principle of an automatic shade roller. It was great fun to roll it up and feel a certain security in the thought that nobody could get into "Breezy Inn" unless they saw fit to let down the ladder. Not that anybody ever wanted to, but it was fun to think so, and, moreover, the rolling ladder was most useful in the playing of certain games, where an unlucky princess was imprisoned in a castle tower.