Page:Carroll Rankin--Dandelion Cottage.djvu/296

 270  would mend the holes in the parlour floor she would give the girls a pretty ingrain carpet, one side of which looked almost new. Dr. Bennett himself laid a clean new floor in the little kitchen over the rough old one, and Mrs. Mapes mended the broken plaster in all the rooms by pasting unbleached muslin over the holes. Mr. Tucker replaced all broken panes of glass, while his busy wife found time to tack mosquito-netting over the kitchen and pantry windows.

So interested, indeed, were all the grownups and all the brothers, that the girls chuckled delightedly. It wouldn't have surprised them so very much if all their people had fallen suddenly to playing with dolls and to having tea-parties in the cottage; but the place was still far too disorderly for either of these juvenile occupations to prove attractive to anybody.

In the midst of the confusion, Mr. Downing stopped at the cottage door one noon, and asked for the girls, who eyed him