"Well, I will," said Betty, and started up the stairs. Half-way up she paused and then came back. "I've got to run back home, Arthur. There's something I want to get before I meet Ruth, and I won't be gone a minute."
She was out of the house in a second, and Arthur left to himself wondered if he should have time to get up-stairs before her return. "I should be afraid to try it," he thought; "she's as quick as a flash, and I should probably be stuck half-way up by the time she got back. I'll wait until the girls get to talking and then they won't hear anything."
In the meantime the pretty pink room was doing its best to make the new occupant feel at home.
"What a dear room!" Ruth said involuntarily as she stepped across the threshold, and, as if to welcome the little mistress, the andirons gleamed brightly, the polished teakettle shone with all its might, and a capacious couch heaped with pillows and covered with a gay Bagdad looked so comfortable that Ruth longed to try it at once. She couldn't resist the temptation to peep into the desk which stood in the comer, and she oh-ed with delight over the dainty paper and the pretty silver penholder with her name engraved on it.
"I suppose you must belong to me, you dear room," she said half aloud, "but I didn't think that I should have such a pretty one."
She looked at the desk with great satisfaction. She opened the little drawers and found to her surprise that one was filled with foreign note-paper in delicate blue. "Just what I want for my letters to papa," she thought with a little sigh, "and it was so thoughtful of them to get blue, for that will express my feelings so much better."
"It's quite like having a fairy godmother," she said aloud, as her eye took in a carved book-rack filled with books, and wandered to the pretty tea-table where a tall chocolate pot seemed to proclaim that nothing so harmful as tea should be taken by the girls who might make merry there.
"She's every bit as nice as a fairy god-mother," said a gay voice, and Ruth turned suddenly to see standing in the doorway a plump, red-haired girl with a fuzzy black kitten nestling on her shoulder.
"On, you are Betty, I know," cried Ruth, much to the astonishment of her guest.
"I am, but I don't see how you knew," answered Betty, opening her brown eyes very wide.