"Here we are, grandpa!" announced Allee, tumbling breathlessly through the doorway and into the nearest chair. "We raced and I beat."
"'Cause Cherry tripped me up," exploded Peace wrathfully. "It's no fair—"
"Tut, tut, my children!" Dr. Campbell interposed. "No scrapping allowed here. This is a home, not a kennel."
"Oh, we weren't scrapping," Peace hastily assured him, "but I'd have won if Cherry hadn't got her feet mixed up with mine, so's Allee got in ahead. I don't care, though. I can run the fastest of the bunch outdoors. Jud says I'm a racer, all right. Did I get the prize for talking the most this noon? Gail and Faith and all of them think I ought to have it—that is, Allee and me. We went together and saw the same things, though I did do all the telling."
The President laughed. "Yes, I believe you and Allee won the prize all right. Grandma thinks so, too, but that is just where the hitch comes; because, you see, the prize was just to be your choice of rooms upstairs, and with Peace in one room and Allee in another, how are we going to settle the question as to who has first choice?"
"Do you mean that the winner can choose which of those three bare rooms she wants for her very own?"
"That's it." His eyes twinkled merrily. Peace's untrammeled frankness furnished him much amusement.
"Well, then, why is Allee going to be in one room and me in another?"
"Why—why—why—" stammered the learned Doctor, at loss to know how to explain certain plans he and Mrs. Campbell had in mind. "We thought it would be best to pair you off so one of you younger girls roomed with one of the older sisters. Don't you?"
"No," was the emphatic reply. "It wouldn't do at all."