Bob was successful in his interview with the pump, and returned victorious from his forage for wood.
The stove was rusty, and "its draught was draughty," Happie remarked, as she vainly coaxed it to give the wood the warm welcome they felt it deserved.
At last a fire was dully burning, and the water in a saucepan, appropriated in lieu of the leaking teakettle, had begun to bubble around the edges, so that there was a cheering prospect of tea. Happie vigorously beat eggs to be scrambled in the frying-pan which Miss Bradbury was scouring, and Margery cut the bread which they had brought with them, while Laura mournfully set the table with such odds and ends of crockery, politely called china, which the place afforded.
When it was ready, it really was not a very bad supper, served with the best of sauces, to all but Mrs. Scollard, who was far too worn-out to do more than nibble a crust of bread with her tea.
No one had remembered kerosene oil, so the three glass lamps discovered in the cellar were "hors de combat," Laura said, priding herself on her French surviving her despair.
There was no choice but to go to bed early for lack of light by which to sit up. Everybody's spirits were several notches higher for the comfort of food, and Penny grew quite hilarious playing trolley on a couch that had such bad springs that Bob remarked "there was no danger of a live wire on that trolley."
Jeunesse Dorée contributed to the improved state of mind of the exiles by his funny antics, going on a voyage of discovery over his new quarters, backing and shying and swelling up at imaginary dangers, and at the singular forms of new shadows, and at last settling down with his nose at a mouse hole from which there seemed to be good ground for his excited expectancy of a mouse.
One of the trunks which Jake had brought up from the station held bed clothing, and Margery and Happie, with Polly to fetch and carry, fell to making beds by the short April twilight.
Laura tried to arrange the bureaux, but the dainty toilette accessories, which had been so pretty on the broad dressers at home, looked sadly out of place on the yellow pine, the gray with red roses, the high black walnut, and the brown bureau with the yellow and blue stripes around the edges of the drawers, which constituted the outfit of the Ark.
There were five bedrooms furnished, after their fashion, and two more under the slanting kitchen roof which were unfurnished. The bedsteads were painted pine and were old-time corded affairs, but none matched a bureau—the state of things justified Laura's artistic despair.