A hubbub of instructions and calls and running to and fro continued after this for some time. Miss Miller tried to superintend the raising of the “huge forest timbers.”
“Say! Won’t one of you girls with nothing to do help me hook up this side of the trees?” called Elena, anxiously, as she found the weight of the duck too heavy to manage alone.
“You’ve got the trees upside-down!” laughed Jane.
“No I haven’t! That’s the way Nita painted this piece,” retorted Elena.
“Why it looks more like an early settler’s log stockade than the beautiful woodland hillside back of the Bluff,” replied surprised Jane, eyeing the painting with her head on one side.
“S-sh! Nita’ll hear you! She is so proud of it! She says it is a much better line of trees than my forest!” whispered Elena, proudly displaying her art work.
Zan came over to assist in hanging the duck and smiled behind the painting as she heard Elena explain the various “scenes” depicted on the great stretch of cotton.
“This is the flat rock where we sat telling bedtime stories; here is the swimming pool, and up there is Fiji’s cave. I tried to get in Bill’s cottage below the Bluff but my paint gave out,” explained Elena, as the three girls lifted and stretched the canvas and hung the hooks over the taut wire.
“But the way you measured and cut the scenery, we’ll have to unhook the cave and Bluff every time we need one side open. You made the other three sides all stockade, you see,” commented Zan.
“That’s so! I never thought of that. We will have to omit one whole side at times, won’t we?” responded Elena,