"It takes an awful lot to furnish a house," commented Roger wisely, "and you know we had very few given us so if we want enough we have to make them."
"We've got all the chairs you've done upholstered all they're going to be," said Ethel Brown. "Why can't Ethel Blue and I each make a high chair?"
"No reason at all," agreed Roger quickly. "You've watched James and me and seen our really superior workmanship; imitate it, my child!"
The girls were already turning over the boys' supply of boxes to select those suitable for the chairs for the children. They took four that had held lemons or other fruit and were tall and narrow when stood on end. The boards they were made of were very light but quite solid enough to hold the weight of a small child. To make it firm upon the ground, however, they sawed a piece of heavy plank a little larger than the end upon which the box was to stand and nailed it on from the inside.
When the high chair was done the boys complimented their co-workers on the success of their first experiment.
"I hardly could have done it better myself," said Roger grandly.
All the high chairs were covered with blue and white cretonne to match the blue and white of the dining room and the girls set to work to tack on the outside covering and to cut out the covers of the small cushions that were to make the seat and back comfortable. The cushions themselves they had made from ticking filled with excelsior when they had calculated the number of high chairs they must have.
The boys, meanwhile were constructing two chairs of quite different build. One was a heavy chair for the hall or the veranda, its original condition being a packing box a foot and a half deep, about twenty inches wide and three or four feet long. This also was set on end, and the other end and the cover were laid aside to be used in making the seat and in shutting in the openings below the seat.
"How are you going to fasten that seat so it won't let the sitter down on the floor?" inquired Ethel Blue, as James explained what he was going to do.
"Do you see these cleats, ma'am? These are each a foot long. I nail one of these standing up straight at each edge of the sides and the back--six of them altogether. Then I lay three other cleats across their tops--thusly."