"Mollie! Pattie! I want you down here!"
Off they ran, feeling down in their little hearts that mother must know how to put things happy again.
First of all they looked with interested and pitying eyes at Norah, whose head had become an odd shape, and whose face was white and patchy. Then they stood side by side with Kitty, watching mother's face, and waiting.
"The B. D. S. has had a bad beginning, dears," she said. "I don't think it was a good plan to pull everything out of your rooms to start with. But never mind that now."
As mother spoke she kept one hand behind her chair, and she smiled.
She was sorry for her little girls.
"I am going to propose," she went on, "that you should alter your society a little bit. The letters will be the same. It will still be the B. D. S.; but the work will be different and easier."
The little faces all brightened as she continued—
"I like my little girls to be tidy and neat in their rooms; but I think mother knows best how the furniture should stand, and where the things look nicest. So I suggest that we call our society the Bedroom Dusting Society. I will give you each a little cloth, and you shall dust your rooms every morning after nurse has made the beds. And once a week I will award a prize."
Then mother drew her hand forward and held before their eyes a Japanese fan, with a long handle, to which was tied a dainty bow of blue ribbon.