THE FLAG ROOM
Scarcely had the dinner hour ended that evening when the hilarious trio
of younger girls, followed by the more sedate, but no less eager older
sisters, scurried down the long corridor toward the den where the
President had already intrenched himself, waiting for the promised
visit.
"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."
"Why not?" gently asked Mrs. Campbell, who had entered the room so
quietly that none of the girls was aware of her presence.
"Well, s'pose you paired us off 'cording to our looks," Peace explained,
without waiting for any of the sisters to register objections; "there'd
be Hope and Allee together, for they are the lightest; and Gail and
Cherry would have a room by themselves, 'cause they aren't either light
or dark; and that would leave Faith and me to each other, being the
darkest of them all. Now, Faith and me can't get along together two
minutes. Ask Gail, ask Hope. Any of them will tell you so. It ain't
because we like to fight, either. We just ain't made to suit each other,
that's all. Mother used to say there are lots of people in the world
like that, and the only way to get along is to make the best of it and
agree to disagree. But it would never do to put us in the same room.
That's too close. We don't like the same things, even. Faith'd be cross
'cause I'd want to put my b'longings certain places, and I'd get awful
ugly if she took all the nice spots for her things.
"Then, s'posing you paired us off by ages--the youngest with the oldest,
and the next youngest with the next oldest,--that would still leave
Faith and me together. It wouldn't do at all, you see."
"How would you suggest dividing the rooms among you, then?" meekly
inquired the President, casting a comical look of resignation at his
puzzled wife.
"Put the ones of us together that get along the best. Allee and me are
chums, and Cherry and Hope, and Faith and Gail. Then we'd all be suited
and there wouldn't be any fussing--'nless it was among the big girls."
The President coughed gently behind his hand, Mrs. Campbell bent over to
straighten an imaginary wrinkle in the rug at her feet, while Gail and
Hope were industriously studying a picture on the wall. But Faith
readily seconded Peace's proposition, saying heartily, "What she says is
true, grandpa. She and I can't seem to get along together at all, though
we do love each other dearly. We never have been interested in the same
things, and I don't believe we ever will be. We have always paired off
the way she says, and get along famously that way."
"But how will you furnish the rooms that way?" wailed Mrs. Campbell
suddenly. "I had planned it all out--the blondes together, the
brunettes, and--"
"The blondes and brunettes?" repeated Cherry in bewilderment.
"Yes; fair-haired, blue-eyed people are blondes, while those with dark
hair and eyes are brunettes," Hope explained.
"It would be so much easier to carry out a color scheme in each room if
you girls were paired off according to looks," sighed the woman in
disappointment.
"Colors wouldn't amount to much if we fought all the time," murmured
Peace, trying hard to look cheerful even at the prospect of having to
room with the one sister she could not understand or agree with.
"That's so," agreed the President, chasing away the disfiguring frown on
his forehead with a bright smile. "Besides, mother, the girls may have
altogether different plans for decorating their rooms than--Well, Peace
and Allee have first choice of room then. Which shall it be?"
"The one with the teenty porch!" quickly responded the duet, as though
the matter had already been privately discussed.
"Aha, conspirators! Had your minds all made up, did you?"
"Yes, grandpa," Peace answered. "We have both slid down the pillar into
the garden--what was the garden--and clum up the trellis as _easy_! Just
think how much time we can save going in and out that way instead of
having to run clear down the hall to the stairs every time--"
"Peace!" screamed Mrs. Campbell in horror.
"Peace!" echoed the scandalized sisters.
But for a long moment the President only stared. Then he spoke. "Now,
see here, children, if you have that balcony room for your own, you must
promise one thing. Don't _ever_ use the porch pillars for a stairway
again, either to get inside the house or out. Do you understand?"
"Yes, grandpa," came the reluctant promise.
"You will not forget?"
"No, grandpa," with still more reluctance.
"If you do, you will forfeit that room, remember. Porch pillars were
never made for such purposes. They are not only hard on your clothes,
but think what would happen if you should slip and fall."
The whole group shuddered at this direful picture, and the chief culprit
snuggled closer to this newly found guardian, and whispered contritely,
"We didn't think of that before. We'll be good."
"That's my girlie! Now for the other matters we must consider. When it
was settled that you were to come here to live, mother and I talked over
plans for refurnishing the rooms you are to occupy, but somehow we could
not come to any satisfactory conclusions, and finally decided it would
be best and wisest to let you select your own furniture and arrange it
to suit yourselves."
"Whee!" interrupted Peace with a delighted little hop. "Won't that be--"
"Don't say 'bully'," implored Cherry.
"No, I won't. I'll say jolly. Won't that be jolly? Hooray!" Her shout of
joy ended in such a queer, shrill squeak that the little company burst
into a gale of laughter, and it was some minutes before order was
restored, but when at last the merriment had subsided, each duet found
themselves holding a small slip of paper which quite took their breath
away.
"What is it?" asked Allee, standing on tiptoe to get a better view of
the yellow scrap in Peace's hand, though she could not read a word on
it.
"Grandpa! Is it to furnish our rooms with?" cried Hope, impulsively
dropping a kiss on the tip of Mrs. Campbell's nose.
"Oh, you precious people!" whispered Gail tremulously. "It is altogether
too much. We ought not to spend all that just on our rooms."
"Now, look here, my dearies," interposed Mrs. Campbell, beaming benignly
at the flushed, surprised faces of the six girls, "father and I figured
it all out carefully, and that is the amount we decided upon as
necessary for all the fixings you would want to make you cosy. And you
will find it won't go so far after all; but I know you can trim up some
very dainty, pretty rooms with that amount. The beds we already had, so
we left them there, but all the other furniture has been removed to the
attic or disposed of in other ways, so you can follow your own
inclinations in refurnishing your boudoirs. That is why I was so anxious
to have the blondes together, but--I don't believe it will matter much.
You will find some way of getting around that."
"Of course they will, and the room that is fixed up the prettiest a week
from today will be presented with an appropriate picture," declared the
President, hugely enjoying the pleasure and surprise of his adopted
family.
Silence for a breathless moment fell upon the eager group, then with
characteristic energy, Peace grabbed Allee's hand and started for the
door, saying, "Come on, sister, let's get to work right away. We've got
to win that picture to go with our porch." Just at the threshold another
thought occurred to her, and she faced about with the remark, "Say,
grandpa, do we have to spend _all_ this money for dec'rations?"
"No," he laughed. "If you can find anything in the attic which you can
use, take possession of it."
"And the money we don't spend is ours?"
For a fraction of a second he hesitated, wondering what scheme was
taking shape under the thatch of brown curls; then with a twinkle in his
eyes he answered, "Yes, I reckon it is."
"But, Donald," whispered Mrs. Campbell in his ear, "they are too young
to be intrusted with such a sum."
"Grandpa," Gail interrupted, looking thoughtfully at the check which
Faith was still studying curiously; "must we do this without help from
anyone else? Suppose we should all happen to choose the same plan?"
"Oh, there is no danger of that at all because your tastes are not all
the same, so far as I can discover; but I think it might be a good plan
to consult with some older or more experienced person--some one outside
the family. Grandma and I are to be the judges, you know; so it would
not be fair for us to know beforehand what you were intending to do."
"Oh, how splendid to have it all a secret from you two!" cried Hope.
"But who will help us?"
"We shall ask Frances Sherrar," announced Gail after a whispered
consultation with her room-mate. "She knows all about such things."
"Then let's us ask Mrs. Sherrar," suggested Cherry, anxious to have as
good authority to back them in their plans.
"That's a good idea," Hope conceded readily. "Whom shall you choose,
Peace?"
They all expected to hear her name Mrs. Strong, her patron saint, but to
their utter amazement she promptly retorted, "Gussie!"
"But, Peace," they protested, "Gussie won't know--"
"Gussie thinks just like I do about colors and such things. That's why I
chose her."
Nor could the sisters change her decision in the matter, but as the time
was short and there were many other affairs demanding their attention,
the girls soon forgot their concern over Gussie's barbaric tastes, and
Peace and Allee were left to their own devices.
For the next three days they spent their leisure moments in wandering
hand in hand about the house, looking very sober, and listening
anxiously to the sound of hammers in the rooms adjoining theirs. Then a
marked change came over them; there were many conferences with Gussie in
the kitchen; much prowling about the attic in secret, and even two or
three trips to the barn to interview Jud, the man of all work. The sound
of hammer and saw could be heard at almost any hour of the day, hurried
visits were made to the sewing-room when no one else was in sight, and
the pungent smell of paint and paste filled the house.
But at last all three rooms were in spick-and-span order, and the two
judges were summoned to behold the result of the week's labor. At the
first door they halted, and the President turned to his wife with a
ludicrous grimace as he said, "Dora, I am afraid I've got us into
trouble. How in this wide world are we going to be able to decide which
is the prettiest room! And if it should be easy to decide that question,
how shall we ever make our peace with the occupants of the other two?
Oh, Dora!"
"Open the door!" clamored the laughing girls. "You should have thought
of these things before you made such a rash promise." And they pressed
about him so relentlessly that he was forced to turn the knob and enter
the first bower of loveliness.
It was indeed a bower, so refreshingly cool and beautiful with its color
scheme of pink and green and brown that it required very little
imagination to transport one into the heart of some enchanted woods; and
instinctively the four younger girls as well as the judges burst into a
long-drawn exclamation of wonder and delight.
"Oh, I can smell the flowers," cried Hope, sniffing the air hungrily as
if expecting to find the woodland blossoms there.
"And hear the creek," added Peace.
"I suppose they have won the prize," sighed Cherry disconsolately, while
behind their backs Gail and Faith ecstatically hugged each other.
"Don't decide the question until we have seen the other two," suggested
Mrs. Campbell sagely, and the excited company flocked eagerly into the
next room.
Here everything was in blue and gold, even to the dainty curtains at the
windows. The walls were covered with a delicate blue paper, dotted with
sprays of cheerful goldenrod; the dresser and table were decorated with
blue silk scarfs embroidered with the same flower; gilt-framed pictures
hung upon the walls; and from the head of each narrow, gilded bedstead
floated soft draperies of blue.
"Sky and sunshine," murmured Gail, quick to feel the perfect harmony of
the room. "Isn't it lovely?"
"Yes, and it is fully as pretty as ours," whispered Faith, "though I
like ours best."
"Now for the last," Cherry urged eagerly, well content with the
rapturous exclamations her room and Hope's had brought forth. "This will
have to be awfully good to beat the other two."
"It _is_ awfully good," Peace informed her. "_I_ think it is the best."
"So do I!" "And I!" came the chorus of surprised voices as the last door
swung open and the beauties of the third chamber burst upon their view.
"It makes me think of fire-crackers," Cherry pensively observed.
"Nobody but Peace would ever have thought of such a thing," Faith put
in.
"A regular Fourth of July room," stuttered the President when he had
recovered his voice enough to speak. "Girlies, how did you do it?"
"Well," confessed Peace, meditatively chewing her finger in her endeavor
to appear modest in the midst of such unstinted praise, "at first we
didn't know what to do. The other girls kept talking about 'propriate
colors for their complexions. Faith is all _blunette_ and she looks best
in pink. Hope is all blonde and blue is her best color, while Gail and
Cherry have _blunette_ hair and blonde eyes, and they chose yellow and
green. I didn't know it then, but that is what they did. Anyway, they
talked about the different colors till I thought we ought to have our
rooms fixed up in things that fitted us. That made it hard for Allee and
me, you see, 'cause she is all blonde and I'm all _blunette_. To fit
her, the room would have to be all blue, and to fit me it would be all
red. Gussie said it wasn't stylish to use red and blue together any
more, so we didn't know what to do until one day when we were
_rummelging_ through the attic we found heaps and heaps of perfectly
whole bunting and two great, big flags. That decided us to make a flag
room of ours, and Gussie said it was a _splen-did_ idea. So that's how
it happened.
"Allee and me'd rather sleep together so's we can talk when we are
awake, instead of having to holler our thoughts clear across the room
from one bed to the other whenever we want to talk secrets; so we traded
beds with Gussie. She said she was willing, and I always did want that
bird of a bed after I saw it in her room. But the curtains wouldn't hang
from its tail like I thought they would, and we--"
"Stole my Paris doll to hold 'em up with!" cried Cherry, spying for the
first time the beautiful waxen image dressed to represent the Goddess of
Liberty, which stood on a tiny mantel over the quaint little bed, and
held the bunting curtains in one hand.
"We _borrowed_ it," Peace corrected. "We couldn't very well _ask_ you
'bout it without your teasing to know why, and Allee and me didn't have
a decent doll among us. Besides, you never play with it any more, and
like as not grandpa or some other person that's got money will give us
one of our own for Christmas. Then you can have yours back again. I
guess you can wait that long, can't you? We wanted the walls striped
with red and white, but Gussie thought that would look too much like a
barber shop, so we just had white paper. It doesn't much matter, for the
flags cover most of that wall, and Martha and George--we found them in
the attic--Washington take up all the space on that side under the
eagle--we got that out of the glass case that stands in the barn loft.
We were going to see if we couldn't find some rugs with flags in them,
but Gussie said it wasn't nice to _walk_ on our country's flag, so we
chose this red carpet that used to be on this floor."
"But where did you get such cute, quaint furniture?" asked Faith who was
trying the white enameled chairs one after another.
"Oh, that all came from the attic, too. Didn't cost us anything. It was
a dull, ugly brown--"
"Mother's mahogany set," whispered Mrs. Campbell to the amused doctor
standing at her side.
"--but a little white varnish made it just what we wanted."
"Did you do the painting?" asked Cherry, testing it with her finger to
see if it stuck.
"No; we tried, but it looked so streaked we thought we sure had spoiled
it. Gussie didn't have time to do a good job on it, either; so we asked
Jud to help us out, and he said he would if Gussie--" There was a
movement at the door, and the company glanced over their shoulders just
in time to see Gussie's dress whisk out of sight down the hall. "--would
give him a kiss. So you see we got that work done dirt cheap, too.
Altogether, we spent nine dollars and ninety-one cents of the money
grandpa gave us. Gussie kept the list. That's what the paper and white
paint and ribbons for tying back our curtains--oh, yes, and the curtains
themselves came to. They are just dotted _Swish_ and we got it at a
sale, so it didn't cost us much. Mrs. Grinnell says always watch for
sales, 'cause lots of bargains can be picked up that way, and we
remembered it this time. We spent the extra nine cents--to make just an
even ten dollars--for candy to treat Gussie and Jud, seeing they
wouldn't take any money for their work, but they didn't eat it all; so
Allee and me had the rest."
"Did you make the curtains yourselves?" asked Cherry, the inquisitive.
"Well, mostly. Gussie cut them for us, and I held them straight in the
machine while Allee made the pedal go. The seams ain't _very_ crooked,
but sometimes the needle would hit a lump in the pattern and teeter out
around it, in spite of all I could do. But the made-up curtains at the
store cost lots more than the raw cloth and weren't half so pretty, so
Gussie said she'd help us make our own. Didn't we do well?"
"You certainly did," was the unanimous verdict. "The prize is yours."
"And children," said the President impressively, as they still lingered
in the quaintly furnished room; "I hope every time you enter this door,
the spirit of patriotism, the love of country, will grow stronger and
greater in your hearts."
"Yes, grandpa, I guess it will," answered Peace in all seriousness,
"'cause we'll always be thinking of the rest of that check money which
we've saved from dec'rating our room so's we could buy fire-crackers and
rockets for next Fourth of July."