“But can you study here?” asked Maisie. “I should think you’d be all the time thinking what to do next to fix it up, and you couldn’t put your mind on your lessons.”
“It may be that way,” laughed Dolly. “We haven’t really tried it yet. You see we only moved in this morning. Not everything is to rights yet. We don’t mind you girls seeing it before it’s all done, but I want it in apple-pie order before we have the Hallowe’en party.”
“Come on,” said Dotty, “let’s gather round the Study fire, and talk over the party. Hallowe’en isn’t so very far away.”
The girls drew up chairs for some and cushions from the window-seats for some, and grouped themselves comfortably before the fire. Dolly put on a log from time to time, for she was one of those rare creatures who are born with a sense of fire-building, as others are born with a sense of colour or rhythm. She always knew just where to poke the dying logs, and where to lay the fresh ones. Dotty had promised not to touch it, for she had a fatal propensity for putting the fire out, or at least causing it to die down.
“Oh, it’s ideal!” exclaimed Grace; “I do envy you girls this place. I wish we could have one, but Father wouldn’t hear of it. He’d think it cost too much.”
“It didn’t cost such an awful lot, my father says,” said Dolly. “But, you know it isn’t always cost that counts. Lots of things are unusual, and that makes people think they are impossible. Your father could afford one, Grace, if he wanted to. You see, it could be built much cheaper than this one. You needn’t really have but one room and then—my goodness! What’s that?”
For a regular hullabaloo was heard outside. Knocking at the door, tapping at the windows, even pounding on the house itself!
Dotty looked out.
“It’s the boys!” she said, and her voice was as of one who announces a dire calamity.
“Oh, fiddlesticks!” exclaimed Dolly. “What shall we do? I didn’t want them this afternoon.”