“Any more beds?” queried Dorothy, peering into the darkness. “We can’t keep house unless we can find more beds.”
“Only one more. I guess we’ve come down to bed rock at last.”
“In other words, the cradle,” she observed, pulling a little old-fashioned trundle bed out into the light.
“Oh, what a joke!” cried Harlan. “That’s worth three dollars in the office of any funny paper in New York!”
“Sell it,” commanded Dorothy, inspired by the prospect of wealth, “and I’ll give you fifty cents for your commission.”
Outside, the storm still raged and the old house shook and creaked in the blast. The rain swirled furiously against the windows, and a swift rush of hailstones beat a fierce tattoo on the roof. Built on the summit of a hill and with only a few trees near it, the Judson mansion was but poorly protected from the elements.
None the less, there was a sense of warmth and comfort inside. “Let’s build a fire in the kitchen,” suggested Dorothy, “and then we’ll try to find something to eat.”
“Which kitchen?” asked Harlan.
“Any old kitchen. The one the back stairs end in, I guess. It seems to be the principal one of the set.”
Harlan brought more wood and Dorothy watched him build the fire with a sense that a god-like being was here put to base uses. Hampered in his log-cabin design by the limitations of the fire box, he handled the kindlings awkwardly, got a splinter into his thumb, said something under his breath which was not meant for his wife to hear, and powdered his linen with soot from the stove pipe. At length, however, a respectable fire was started.