“How will these do?” asked Frank, strolling to the foot of the attic stairs.
A pile of furniture was there, and the boys gave a yell of joy. It did not take long, with three pairs of willing hands and feet, to take their club furniture and place it in the now clean and shining room. Then Eddie raced off home, returning after a half hour with a large, worn but not unattractive rug and a couple of pictures. The pictures, it is true, did not seem to have any direct bearing on the club, one being an old woodcut of the Infant Samuel, and the other a brightly colored lithograph of Masonic emblems with a rather accusing eye staring out of the center, but Eddie had found them in the attic, and both were in gold frames and certainly did brighten up the walls.
With a calendar and a large card of the Morse alphabet, the boys felt that the room could not be more complete.
“We will have just one expense, and we will have to make everybody chip in for that,” said Eddie. “We must have shades at the windows. We wouldn’t want any spies to see what we were doing.”
“Better get that spy stuff out of your head, Eddie,” said Frank. “There is no war on hand now, and spying has gone out of business.”
“How about the Bolsheviks and the Reds and all those?” demanded Bill.
“I don’t think they will bother you if there are any left,” said Frank. “Better use your wireless for commercial purposes, or for news items.”
“Well, we will take whatever comes along,” said Eddie.
“That’s the stuff!” said a new voice at the door. It was Ernest. “Take whatever comes. Like a fellow I knew. Heard something he thought was a coon in the brush, and set his hound after it. Said he’d take whatever came along, but he didn’t. He turned and ran; and even then he was sort of sorry he couldn’t run faster. And the dog, my, that dog was perfectly despised for months by everyone who knew him. It’s a queer world! Did you know that your friend, the plump one who eats peanuts, is sitting on the front porch, and the thin one too?”
“How did they come there?” demanded Bill in surprise.