“Yes, Daddy, dear, you shall get those flower-boxes set up as soon as the gentle Spring gets around.”
“Well, I do love flowers,” and Mr. Rose smiled, for his family well knew his great fondness for gardening. “Now you girls won’t have any too much time to get your flummerydiddles ready. For after the house is built and papered and painted, you ought to have your furnishings all ready. And to make curtains and cushions and lace whatd’y’callums—tidies? will be a few weeks’ work,—won’t it?”
“Yes, indeedy. But all our beloved lady relatives will help us and among our sisters and our mothers and our aunts, I ’spect we’ll accumulate about enough housekeeping stuff to stock a hotel.” Dotty danced around the table as she talked, and catching Dolly in her arms, the two executed a sort of triumphal hoppity-skip that expressed their joy and relieved their feelings.
“And now,” sighed Dolly, suddenly looking thoughtful, “I’ve got to go right straight, smack home and do my Geometry for to-morrow.”
“Oh, my goodness! me too!” exclaimed Dotty. “Dear! how I wish Treasure House was done, and I could go there to study. It’s an awful long time to wait.”
“But we can make things every chance we get. Oh, Dotty, I’m going to make a birch-bark scrapbasket. I’ve got a lot of that bark left that I brought down from Crosstrees. Won’t it be fine?”
“Great! Shall we have two?”
“No, only one scrapbasket and such things. It’s more cosy. But two of everything that we use separately. Like two desks, you know.”
“Only one set of bookshelves.”
“Well, there’ll be nooks for books, beside the fireplace, and beside the window casings,” said Mr. Rose, “in addition to the regular shelves. I haven’t half fixed those things up yet.”