"Yes. He's got a spare room—and it's very neat and clean. There's a woman comes in and 'does' for him, as he calls it. He needs a chap like me to give him a hand now and then—taking care of the pig and his garden, you know."
"Not in the winter, Neale," said Ruth, gently. "I hope you are not leaving us for any foolish reason. You are perfectly welcome to stay. You ought to know that."
"That is fine of you, Ruth," he said, gratefully. "But you don't need me here. I can feel more independent over there at Murphy's. And I shall be quite all right there, I assure you."
The house was now all to rights—"spick and span," Mrs. MacCall said—and Saturday was given up to preparing for the coming school term. It was the last day of the long vacation.
Dot had no loose tooth to worry her and she was busy, with Tess, in preparing the dolls' winter nursery. All summer the little girls had played in the rustic house in the garden, but now that September had come, an out-of-door playroom would soon be too cold.
Although the great garret made a grand playroom for all hands on stormy days, Ruth thought it too far for Dot and Tess to go to the top of the house alone to play with their dolls. For her dolls were of as much importance to Dot as her own eating or sleeping. She lived in a little world of her own with the Alice-doll and all her other "children"; and she no more thought of neglecting them for a day than she and Tess neglected Billy Bumps or the cats.
There was no means of heating the garret, so a room in the wing with their bed chambers, and which was heated from the cellar furnace, was given up to "the kiddies'" nursery.
There were many treasures to be taken indoors, and Dot and Tess toiled out of the garden, and up the porch steps, and through the hall, and climbed the stairs to the new playroom—oh! so many times.
Mr. Stetson, the groceryman, came with an order just as Dot was toiling along with an armful to the porch.
"Hello! hello!" he exclaimed. "Don't you want some help with all that load, Miss Dorothy?" She was a special favorite of his, and he always stopped to talk with her.