The front door opened directly into a quite large hall, evidently the living-room. There was a glowing fire in the old-fashioned fireplace opposite the door, a low bookcase on one side of the fireplace and a piano on the other; the stairs were at one end of the room, and folding-doors opened into the dining-room at the opposite end. On a chintz-covered lounge close to the front windows sat Alice in a blue wrapper the colour of her eyes, and with one foot stretched out, covered with an afghan. Her face flushed with pleasure: “O, I am so glad you all came,” she said, as they drew around her. “I fell on some ice, coming home from school yesterday, and twisted my ankle a little, the doctor said, so I couldn’t come to the Club, and so we invited you here. What shall we do?” she asked, leaning back against the gay chintz pillows and looking like a large, sweet-faced doll with softly dimpled cheeks.
“I brought some of the dolls’ dresses—there are yet eight more to make,” Miss Ruth said, taking a package from the deep pocket of her fur-lined coat. “We can sew on those for one thing to do.”
“I have made my last week’s two dresses,” cried Alice, pulling them in very rumpled condition from under a sofa pillow, while Elsa and Betty dived into their coat pockets, each bringing out two dresses, all finished.
“Good!” said Miss Ruth, taking off her coat and hat, at Mrs. Holt’s bidding. “Perhaps we can each do two to-day—though these are for the largest dolls.”
“I will gladly help you sew,” Mrs. Holt said. “Alice has told me that the dolls are to be given away at Christmas: that is all I know about it,” she added, smiling in a motherly, understanding way. She had a pretty, rather sad face and a very tender look in her blue eyes. It was a great grief to her to be parted from her husband, and there was another grief which lay further back in her heart.
Even in the few moments of their talking together, Ruth Warren had decided that Mrs. Holt was a very charming woman, and just the kind of a mother Ben and Alice might be expected to have.
Elsa and Betty had drawn their chairs very near to Alice and were telling her all that had happened in school that morning, when Ben came in from having put the horse into the barn, and walked up to his mother’s side with “What shall we do?”
“O, I know what to do,” he exclaimed, answering his own question. “We will have a show.”
“Goody!” cried Betty, hearing his last words.
Mrs. Holt entered at once into the plan. “Miss Warren and Alice and I will be audience. You can manage your show with Betty and Elsa to help, I think.”