“My dearest Edith,
I am not the least bit lonely, and should feel very badly indeed if you were to cut your visit short. So don’t come until the week is up.
Your devoted husband,
William.”
Then she read Mary’s letter. “The dolls are just loads of fun,” Mary wrote. “I have made them a little sleeping-tent beside ours, and they sleep out doors with me, and you were such an old dear to send Mrs. Delight. Hasn’t she the loveliest clothes?”
And just at this moment Betsey was very glad indeed that she had sent Mrs. Delight away. But the letter reminded her that Mrs. Delight would be away only three days longer, so she fell to work again.
Such a patient little worker was Betsey! She measured the pretty wall-paper carefully, and pressed out every bubble of paste with a soft cloth, so that her walls were very workmanlike indeed. She always stood Mr. Delight up in his shirt-sleeves in the room she was at work in, to superintend things in general.
Out of a sweet-smelling box that had once held three cakes of soap, Betsey made Mrs. Delight’s green ruffled bed. Then she drew chickens with real ink on the pillow-sham of the guest-room bed, and printed BATH-MAT in bright red, in the center of the dear little rug, to be laid beside the new tub.
One morning when Betsey was making up the tiny new beds with the fresh new sheets and embroidered blankets, Tom came up two stairs at a time with a large shoe-box. “Mrs. Delight arrived on this train!” he cried.
“O don’t undo her yet!” pleaded Betsey in great distress. “The house isn’t ready for her to see yet.”