“It certainly is good to have you back, children,” said their father, as he sat with a daughter on each side of him after dinner. They had their mother out on the back porch with them. It was nearly as large as the front one, and she could be moved, couch and all, through a front window with very little trouble. “Now I can have an afternoon off from housekeeping. But I’ve done well, haven’t I, Mary?”
“You certainly have,” said Mrs. Merriam, “and it’s been hard for you, too. But now that I have my Camp Fire Girls back nobody’s going to need to do one thing.”
“Not a thing!” said Florence. “We’ve learned ever so many things, mother. We’re going to house-keep better’n you ever did!”
The family shouted. It was so like Florence.
“I don’t think quite that,” said Winona modestly. “But we’re going to have a lovely time running things, anyway!”
So next morning the “lovely time” began.
It seemed queer to waken on a mattress instead of on a pine bed; still stranger to hear the alarm-clock go off. Winona did not like alarm-clocks, and she threw a pillow at it before she stopped to think. But she got up as it told her, for all that, and was downstairs in twenty minutes. She had put on a blue ripplette work-dress, fresh and pretty. It was pleasant to have on a pretty frock instead of the camp uniform.
“There are lots of nice things!” she said to herself sturdily. “I’m going to enjoy myself every minute, if I have to tie a string to my finger to remind me!”
She found Clay, whose acquaintance she had made the night before, already down. The cereal was in the double boiler and the coffee in the percolator, already.
“Hit ain’ much to do fo’ breakfast,” said he encouragingly. “Ah do it maself, mos’ly.” And indeed he proved so expert that all Winona found left her to do was gathering the flowers for the table, and cutting the oranges. Breakfast had more frills than usual, though—Winona had come home prepared for work, and she found some to do. The oranges were loosened back from their skins like grape-fruit, there were finger-bowls with flower-petals floating on top, the cereal dishes had little plates underneath, and even the hot corn-bread, which Winona, by the way, discovered Clay did not know how to make, was stacked in a highly artistic log-cabin pattern. Winona, with a little white apron over her fresh blue dress, sat and poured the coffee importantly. Her father smiled with pleasure, as she sat opposite him, flushed and pretty and dainty.