CHAPTER XXI.
SETTLING UP.
The next day, our last at the Beach, such scrubbing, sweeping and dusting went on as was never seen before I am sure. We were determined that Mrs. Rand should not say that girls at best were "goatish." Blanche insisted that she could do all the cleaning herself, but we thought it but fair to turn in and help.
"How could people in one short month collect so much mess?" demanded Dum, as she turned bureau drawers out on the beds and did what she called "picking rags." "Do you s'pose on a desert island we would find ourselves littered up with a lot of doo-dads?"
"Well, Robinson Crusoe collected Friday, besides several other days of the week that I can't remember," answered Dee, "and it seems to me he got a dog and a cat and a parrot, and he certainly 'made him a coat of an old Nannie goat.' He had no luggage at all on his arrival and had much to cart away. And look at Swiss Family Robinson! There was nothing they did not collect in the way of belongings on their desert island, even a wife for one of the boys."
"Do you know, I used to think Swiss Family Robinson was the best book that had ever been written," said I, emerging from the closet with an arm full of shoes.
"Well, I don't know but that it is still," declared Dum. "Wouldn't it be just grand to be cast on a desert island? Of course I mean if Zebedee could be cast along, too."
"Of course we wouldn't be cast without him," said Dee, "Heaven would be more like the other place if Zebedee wasn't there. Goodness, I wish he didn't have to work and we could all stay together all the time!"
"When I grow up a little more and learn how, I am going to sculp such a wonderful statue that Zebedee can stop working." Dum forgot all about the rags she was picking and with the dreamy expression we knew so well, began to ball up a perfectly clean shirt waist as though it were clay and with her sculptor's thumb shape it into I don't know what image of surpassing beauty.
She was rudely awakened from her dream by Dee, who snatched the imaginary clay from her twin, exclaiming: