"I suppose I should have stopped to think which way the wind was blowing," she said quickly. "But somehow I never can remember that some people dislike the smell of paint. It seems so clean, and it always makes me think how nice things are going to look when you are done." She studied the unfinished chair, and suppressed a sigh. "I'll just dab a little more paint on this round, and then I'll set it in the woodshed and wait till the wind is from the east."
Peggy gave her attention to a particularly battered portion of the chair's anatomy, till she was aroused from her absorption by a question. The voice which asked it was intense, almost tragically so, in striking contrast to the serenity of the afternoon.
"Don't you hate, hate, hate to be poor?"
A big spot of white paint added itself to the decoration of the calico skirt, as Peggy stared up at her interrogator. "Why, I don't know," she acknowledged, "I guess I never thought about it."
"Not thought about it? Why, how can you help it when you have to do things like this?" Elaine made a scornful gesture, in the direction of the woe-begone chair. "Just suppose that all you had to do when you wanted something new was to go and buy it."
Peggy laughed a little. "I'm afraid my imagination isn't equal to that," she replied cheerily. "And, anyway, this sort of thing is such fun!"
"Fun!" echoed Elaine, with an incredulous gasp.
"Why, yes! To take something like this chair and fix it up so that it is useful and pretty is real fun. And so are lots of things about housework. There's cooking, now."
"I don't know a thing about cooking." Elaine had moved a little nearer Peggy, as if afraid of losing something. Her air of interest was unmistakable.
"Well, I love it all, but the nicest part, I think, is taking the left-overs, you know, the cold potatoes, and the ends of the steak, and fixing them up into real nice appetizing dishes."