"Mr. Robinson said his wife would be out to get acquainted with us soon," Louisa explained, "and of course she'll have to stay all night. And where, I ask you, Rosemary, is she to sleep?"
"Why I don't know, dear," replied Rosemary, smiling. "What is the matter with this room?"
She looked about it as she spoke. It was a large, square room, very clean and, it must be confessed, very bare. There was a bureau, one leg missing and the lack supplied by a brick; one chair, the bed and a little table (not large enough to be useful and not small enough to be dainty) completed the furnishings.
"It looks so awful," said poor Louisa. "And of course I can't buy material for curtains; Mother used to say that curtains softened a room and helped to furnish it. But I certainly am thankful for one thing."
"What?" Rosemary asked.
"That I've always saved one pair of Mother's good sheets and her best light blankets and two pillow cases, real linen ones," said Louisa. "When the linen began to wear out, I patched it and darned it as well as I could, but our sheets last winter were made of flour sacks, stitched together. They're white as snow for I bleached them, but I wouldn't want to have Mr. Robinson's wife sleep on flour sack sheets."
"Oh, my, of course not," said the sympathetic Rosemary.
"She won't have to," declared Louisa with satisfaction. "Much as I have wanted to use these sheets and the blankets, I've kept them put away. They are linen Mother had when she was married and I never could afford to buy any like it now."
"That's fine," said Rosemary, a trifle absently.
She was studying the windows, three placed close together on one side of the room.