"It's all done," she announced. "Just come and see how neat we have made everything. Barbara, you and I are to have this cupboard all to ourselves, besides those drawers, and nurse says Evan and Ivor are not to come into our room at all."
"All right," said Evan, "I don't want to. You keep to yours and we'll keep to ours, won't we, Ivor? What have you given us? I suppose we shall have to 'shift,' as Mrs. Giah calls it."
Mrs. Giah was the woman who had charge of the cottage when they were not there. She kept occasional fires burning, aired the rooms, let in the sunshine, and shut out the rain, and prepared the place for them if any of the family wanted to come down for a few days.
Mrs. Giah was an old servant who had known and nursed Lucia's mother, so that though the children laughed softly at her amusing sayings, it was with a certain tenderness which long years of loving service had earned for the old woman. On her part, no people in the world were like her Carews. Though she did think that the young people could sometimes "shift" a little more than they seemed inclined to do, no one in the world must say a word against them in her hearing.
[CHAPTER V.]
LUCIA'S GIFT.
BARBARA CAREW lived in a practical world, while May lived in an imaginative one. Barbara was always devising some means to help someone, or do something, while little May was dreaming of royal palaces and untasted joys.
So Barbara amused her brothers and sisters; was always ready to run out to the hens, or follow Mrs. Giah to the farm to look for eggs, or to climb up into the empty carts with her brothers, while May would be seated in a corner of the hayloft, talking to her doll, or buried in the "Arabian Nights."
That afternoon, just as Lucia was wondering what she should do with herself, she heard cartwheels lumbering up the lane which led to the back of the cottage.
This was such an unusual sound, that the children ran out to see what it could be.