"If it weren't for you people, I don't think I should have the courage to try it," acknowledged Max.
"We'll make it such a winter you'll never have the courage to go back," prophesied Ferry. "I have a pair of toboggans stowed away somewhere; I'll send for them when the snow comes. That slope from your timber lot down across the fields—"
Bob, returning from the handspring episode, caught these words and raised a whoop of anticipation. "Hi—toboggans!" he was heard to ejaculate at intervals during the next ten minutes.
"Sally," said Uncle Timothy Rudd, "up in New Hampshire, where I used to live before I came to stay with your family, there is an attic full of old furniture which belonged to my father. I have never disposed of it, because certain associations made me have an affection for it. It is pretty old style, and not, I am afraid, in very good condition, but if you care for it—"
"Oh, Uncle Timmy! No matter how old it is or how shaky, we can use it."
"Probably the older and shakier it is, the more valuable when it has been restored," suggested Mrs. Burnside.
"I should say so," declared Jarvis, with emphasis. "You should have heard the Neil Chases rave over some of theirs. Neil found a sideboard in an old cabin down South; it had the doors nailed on with strips of leather; they kept corn meal and molasses in it. He wouldn't take five hundred dollars for it now."
"I don't imagine," said Uncle Timothy, cautiously, "that any of my things are as valuable as that, so don't get your expectations too high, Sally. But they may help you in the matter of supplying chairs and beds for your friends. I take it this will be a hospitable homestead, when Sally is mistress of it."
"How could it help being hospitable," cried Sally, happily, "with friends like ours for guests?"
"Let's make a circle on the hearth, for good luck," proposed Josephine.