“Not just yet,” Babs replied to her father’s suggestion. “Wait until I get things fixed up a little.”
But a new interest was now claiming the time and attention of Sea Cosset folks. A real Old Home Week was being inaugurated, and Babs was asked to head the girls’ committee.
“Because,” said Miss Mary-Louise Trainor, “she knows something. She takes more books out of the library than any other girl in the place.” Miss Trainor told the women’s committee that and so Babs had been asked. She could not refuse; her father pointed out the fact to her, that because the Hales were a part of the sea-coast town, and living “over the line in Landing” did not make her exempt from obligation to help with this affair. She was a native, one who lived there winter and summer, and what did the summer girls know about Old Home Week anyhow?
So Babs had reluctantly consented with reservations. She wouldn’t boss anybody and she wouldn’t work at night. She wanted her evenings to do as she pleased with them, and if the “show” was to hold forth of nights the women would have to “tend it,” she pointed out, reasonably enough.
The old Stillwell place was selected for the exhibit, as quaint an old homestead as could be found in the entire county. Then the women’s committee decided that all sorts of old-time handiwork would be taken in the collection, and that meant that quilts were going to receive a tremendous boom.
All one could hear was “quilts”; every one seemed to have a collection of at least one, and those who didn’t own one knew just where they could borrow one. So a quilt deluge was threatened.
Candlesticks were probably next in point of popularity, and Barbara knew something about them. She knew that Nicky could supply a pair, beautifully carved in new or old wood, for he had done so when Cara offered him her patronage. Who carved them or where he got them was as mysterious to Babs as to the other girls, and boys too, for that matter, for Babs had insisted upon leaving the Italians to themselves.
“If we want to try their candlesticks, all right,” she said simply but finally. “I don’t see what business it is of ours where they get them from.”
“Neither do I,” agreed Cara stoutly, “for we know very well they don’t steal them. Who would have things like that anyway? They have simply been made to fill our order,” she concluded sagely.
This was all settled shortly after the windup of the house party. Then little Nicky had taken Cara’s order, and the delivery of the quaintly carved wooden candlesticks, tinted with softly blended colors that reminded one of the Italian painters, was made within an incredibly short time.