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 Allée’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.”