“Mother changed her mind,” said Dorothy. “She thought a bungalow would be too crowded now that we have little Belgian Elisabeth with us, so the house is going to have two stories and an attic.”
“The U. S. C. couldn’t get on without Dorothy’s attic,” smiled Ethel Brown, for almost all of the presents for the Christmas Ship had been made in the attic of Dorothy’s present abiding place, and the Club had had many meetings there.
“There’s nothing like having a well-thought-out plan before you attempt building,” said Mr. Emerson, “and that your mother had.”
“She tried to think of every possible need, Ayleesabet’s as well as our own,” continued Dorothy, using the pronunciation that the Belgian baby had given her own name.
“She has a good contractor in Anderson.”
“He didn’t make the very lowest bid,” said Dorothy. “There was one man who was lower, but he was such a lot lower that Mother thought there must be something the matter with the quality of the material he used, or that he employed workmen so poor that they might not do their work well, so she didn’t consider that offer at all.”
“She was very wise,” commended Mr. Emerson. “He might have spoiled the whole thing and have cost her more money in the end by turning out a poor job.”
While the building was going on and before the inside work was done the girls spent a good deal of time in planning for the furnishing of the garden. The flower and vegetable beds had all been arranged some weeks before and many of them had been planted, but the artistic part of the garden had been left until there should be time to devote to it. Mrs. Smith had promised Dorothy that she should have the choice of the garden furniture, reserving for herself a veto power if her daughter chose anything that seemed to her entirely unsuitable.
“Not that I expect to use it,” she said, smiling at the girls who were listening to her.
The selection of the benches and tables and trellises was made a subject of attention by the whole United Service Club. A meeting was called in the partly begun garden so that they might have the “lie of the land” before them as they talked. Dorothy took with her a number of catalogues from which to select or to gather ideas.