"You will find the furniture mostly in the rooms where it belongs," Mrs. Bell called after them. "Jane will be up soon and straighten you out, if you get mixed. Rufus, suppose you go round after the others and bring away all the litter they leave after the uncrating, and make a neat pile of it in the wood-shed."
The steep and narrow little staircase ascended abruptly between walls from the dining-room and led to low-ceiled regions above, which, to the eyes of Murray and Shirley Townsend, from the big house across the street, facing Worthington Square, would have seemed too cramped and small of dimensions to be habitable, to say nothing of the possibility of their ever being made comfortable. But the Bells were of the sort who make the best of everything, and so far none of them had suggested that the little house was not an abode fit for the finest.
"Jane and Nan in one room, Rufe and I in another, and Mr. Ross McAndrew alone in state in this little one in the corner. I judge by the signs that's the stowing of the crowd intended," speculated Peter, surveying each room in turn.
"That corner room's as big as any. I don't think I ought to have it all to myself," objected Ross.
"What, not that spacious eight-by-nine apartment, with one whole side under the eaves?" laughed Peter. "Well, since we can't split ourselves into halves, and like the family of the famous poem 'we are seven,' I don't see but you 'll have to make the best of your loneliness. The beds are only three-quarters size, and Rufe takes up less room than you do, so he and I naturally chum it."
"All right. Let's make a start. Catch hold of that bureau, and heave it around into place."
They fell to work with a will. Ross, the more lightly built, showed the greater energy of the two, though Peter worked away quite as steadily. But after an hour of hard labour Peter called a halt.
"Oh, let's put it through," and Ross bent over a box with undiminished ardour.
His attitude appealed to Peter, spoiling for fun after a long day at the factory, and in a twinkling he had tipped his cousin head first into the nearly empty box. Shouts, laughter and a lively scuffle ensued--so lively a scuffle, indeed, that Mr. Bell, Jane and Nancy, in the dining-room below, energetically sweeping up the litter made by the paperer, smiled at one another in mock dismay as the floor above resounded with the pounding and scraping of boot-heels, and the very walls of the small house trembled with the fray.
"Goodness, I should think it was elephants up there!" cried Nancy, and ran half-way up the stairs to see what was going on.