Having decided, they proceeded to make the best of what each felt in her heart to be a very bad bargain, with the courage each possessed in different forms.
There were two days intervening between that on which the new boarding-place was engaged and the day on which it was to be "infested," as Bab called taking possession. That young person assumed the task of beautifying their unattractive quarters, nor would she permit any of the others to see her improvements, but hammered her thumbs and strained her unaccustomed arms putting up curtains, shelves, casts, and photographs unassisted, in order to "usher her family into a bower of bliss" when it moved in.
On the afternoon before this event, Barbara came along Thirty —— Street from Sixth Avenue. Her arms were full of flower-pots—two filled them—and a boy came behind with a basket containing six more. Bab had not been able to resist the temptation to invest in plants to fill her mother's sunny window and make the room a little more cheerful. She hurried down the street, and paused at the foot of the steps long enough to let her listless attendant squire catch up with her. She had no hand to give her skirts, but she sprang up the steps, regardless of the danger of tripping. At the same instant the front door opened and a cocker spaniel rushed out, barking wildly and throwing himself downward with that apparent utter disregard of whether head or tail went first, and of anything which might be in his path, characteristic of a young and blissful little dog.
"A YOUNG MAN DASHED DOWN THE STEPS INTO THE RUINS."
He flung himself down, and Barbara stepped aside; her balance was uncertain, and her skirts unmanageable by reason of her laden arms. She tripped, fell, and flower-pots, dog, and girl rolled crashing and scattering dirt in all directions into the boy and basket two steps lower, ending in a tangle on the sidewalk.