This argument was being held during the try-out of the grass beds in the living-room.
"See-saw, Margery Daw, She packed up her bed and lay upon straw,"
sang Felicia.
But the grass was an improvement. Grass below and Mrs. Hop's quilts above, with the overcoats in reserve--the Sturgises considered themselves quite luxurious, after last night's shift at sleep.
"What care we if the beds don't come?" Ken said. "We could live this way all summer. Let them perish untended in the trolley freight-house."
But when Kirk was asleep, the note of the conversation dropped. Ken and Felicia talked till late into the night, in earnest undertones, of ways and means and the needs of the old house.
And slowly, slowly, all the wheels did begin to turn together. Some of the freight came,--notably the beds,--after a week of waiting. Ken and Hop carried them upstairs and set them up, with much toil. Ken chopped down two dead apple-trees, and filled the shed with substantial fuel. The Asquam Market would deliver out Winterbottom Road after May first. Trunks came, with old clothes, and Braille books and other books--and things that Felicia had not been able to leave behind at the last moment. Eventually, came a table, and the Sturgises set their posied plates upon it, and lighted their two candles stuck in saucers, and proclaimed themselves ready to entertain.
"And," thought Felicia, pausing at the kitchen door, "what a difference it does make!"
Firelight and candle-light wrought together their gracious spell on the old room. The tin spoons gleamed like silver, the big brown crash towel that Ken had jokingly laid across the table looked quite like a runner. The light ran and glowed on the white-plastered ceiling and the heavy beams; it flung a mellow aureole about Kirk, who was very carefully arranging three tumblers on the table.
The two candle-flames swayed suddenly and straightened, as Ken opened the outer door and came in.