The Lilac Lady Part 2

"Yes, I like the horses and I like the people. It's going to be nice to live with such a _neducated_ bunch. Marie's the only one that doesn't want to learn more, but p'raps she'll get over it. Who wins the prize, grandpa? That's all Allee and me saw. And what is the prize?"

"After dinner in the den tonight I'll tell you the secret," the President promised. "I had no idea it would take so long to recount your adventures, but my time is up now. I must go back to the University at once. And by the way, Peace, I am afraid Jud will have to show you around the campus if you must see it this afternoon. I have an important meeting at two o'clock."

CHAPTER II

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 sc.r.a.pping allowed here. This is a home, not a kennel."

"Oh, we weren't sc.r.a.pping," Peace hastily a.s.sured 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

"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 refurnis.h.i.+ng 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 sc.r.a.p 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 refurnis.h.i.+ng 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.