"Fine, Betty! We'll do it again! I don't object at all to getting up early when I'm once up! And we ought to get out and play tennis before breakfast every day."
"I knew you'd like it when you'd tried it once. But it took my birthday to make you willing to celebrate this way."
"Just you wait till you see what I have for you at home! I made it all myself, with a little help from Ruth!"
"Oh, Bob, is that what you've been doing all these evenings? I'm so anxious to see it! I've begrudged the time you've spent all alone hammering and sawing away down in the basement, but I didn't let myself even wonder what it was you were making, since you had asked me not to look."
"Well, while you're beginning the breakfast, I'll be bringing your birthday gift upstairs. Then I can help you."
In a short time, when Bettina was arranging the cheerful hollyhocks on the table, she heard a low whistle behind her. There stood Bob—looking like a sandwich-man, with a brightly flowered cretonne screen draped about him.
"Well, how do you like it?"
"Oh, Bob, it's the sewing-screen I've been wanting, and it just matches the cretonne bedroom hangings! Here are the little pockets for mending and darning materials—and the larger ones for the unfinished work! How beautifully it is made—and won't it be convenient! It will be useful as a screen, and also as a place for those sewing things, for I have no good place at all in which to keep them! It will be decorative, too! And how light it is! I can carry it so easily, and work beside it on the porch or in the living room!"
"Glad you like it! Ruth designed it, and made the pockets. I did the carpenter work."
"Bob, it's a lovely birthday gift, and I appreciate it all the more because you made it yourself. How pretty it is with all the woodwork enameled white!"