With a strip of carpet for the floor, a small table resurrected from the garret, a bench and three wicker rockers, freshly painted green, and Hilary"s hammock, rich in pillows, Pauline felt that their porch was one to be proud of. To Patience had been entrusted the care of keeping the old blue and white Canton bowl filled with fresh flowers, and there were generally books and papers on the table. And they might have done it all before, Pauline thought now, if they had stopped to think.
"Have you decided?" Hilary asked her, glancing at the sober face bent over the samples.
"I believe I"d forgotten all about them; I think I"ll choose this--"
Pauline held up a sample of blue and white striped dimity.
"That _is_ pretty."
"You can have it, if you like."
"Oh, no, I"ll have the pink."
"And the lavender dot, for Mother Shaw?"
"Yes," Hilary agreed.
"Patience had better have straight white, it"ll be in the wash so often."
"Why not let her choose for herself, Paul?" Hilary suggested.
"Hilary! Oh, Hilary Shaw!" Patience called excitedly, at that moment from downstairs.
"Up here!" Hilary called back, and Patience came hurrying up, stumbling more than once in her eagerness. The next moment, she pushed wide the door of the "new room." "See what"s come! It"s addressed to you, Hilary--it came by express--Jed brought it up from the depot!" Jed was the village expressman.
She deposited her burden on the table beside Hilary. It was a good-sized, square box, and with all that delightful air of mystery about it that such packages usually have.
"What do you suppose it is, Paul?" Hilary cried. "Why, I"ve never had anything come unexpectedly, like this, before."
"A whole lot of things are happening to us that never"ve happened before," Patience said. "See, it"s from Uncle Paul!" she pointed to the address at the upper left-hand corner of the package. "Oh, Hilary, let me open it, please, I"ll go get the tack hammer."
"Tell mother to come," Hilary said.
"Maybe it"s books, Paul!" she added, as Patience scampered off.
Pauline lifted the box. "It doesn"t seem quite heavy enough for books."
"But what else could it be?"
Pauline laughed. "It isn"t another Bedelia, at all events. It could be almost anything. Hilary, I believe Uncle Paul is really glad I wrote to him."
"Well, I"m not exactly sorry," Hilary declared.
"Mother can"t come yet," Patience explained, reappearing. "She says not to wait. It"s that tiresome Mrs. Dane; she just seems to know when we don"t want her, and then to come--only, I suppose if she waited "til we did want to see her, she"d never get here."
"Mother didn"t say that. Impatience, and you"d better not let her hear you saying it," Pauline warned.
But Patience was busy with the tack hammer. "You can take the inside covers off," she said to Hilary.
"Thanks, awfully," Hilary murmured.
"It"ll be my turn next, won"t it?" Patience dropped the tack hammer, and wrenched off the cover of the box--"Go ahead, Hilary! Oh, how slow you are!"
For Hilary was going about her share of the unpacking in the most leisurely way. "I want to guess first," she said. "Such a lot of wrappings! It must be something breakable."
"A picture, maybe," Pauline suggested. Patience dropped cross-legged on the floor. "Then I don"t think Uncle Paul"s such a very sensible sort of person," she said.
"No, not pictures!" Hilary lifted something from within the box, "but something to get pictures with. See, Paul!"
"A camera! Oh, Hilary!"
"And not a little tiny one." Patience leaned over to examine the box.
"It"s a three and a quarter by four and a quarter. We can have fun now, can"t we?" Patience believed firmly in the cooperative principle.
"Tom"ll show you how to use it," Pauline said. "He fixed up a dark room last fall, you know, for himself."
"And here are all the doings." Patience came to investigate the further contents of the express package. "Films and those funny little pans for developing in, and all."
Inside the camera was a message to the effect that Mr. Shaw hoped his niece would be pleased with his present and that it would add to the summer"s pleasures,
"He"s getting real uncley, isn"t he?" Patience observed. Then she caught sight of the samples Pauline had let fall. "Oh, how pretty!
Are they for dresses for us?"
"They"d make pretty scant ones, I"d say," Pauline, answered.
"Silly!" Patience spread the bright sc.r.a.ps out on her blue checked gingham ap.r.o.n. "I just bet you"ve been choosing! Why didn"t you call me?"
"To help us choose?" Pauline asked, with a laugh.
But at the present moment, her small sister was quite impervious to sarcasm. "I think I"ll have this," she pointed to a white ground, closely sprinkled with vivid green dots.
"Carrots and greens!" Pauline declared, glancing at her sister"s red curls. "You"d look like an animated boiled dinner! If you please, who said anything about your choosing?"
"You look ever so nice in all white, Patty," Hilary said hastily.
"Have you and Paul chosen all white?"
"N-no."
"Then I shan"t!" She looked up quickly, her blue eyes very persuasive.
"I don"t very often have a brand new, just-out-of-the-store dress, do I?"
Pauline laughed. "Only don"t let it be the green then. Good, here"s mother, at last!"
"Mummy, is blue or green better?" Patience demanded.
Mrs. Shaw examined and duly admired the camera, and decided in favor of a blue dot; then she said, "Mrs. Boyd is down-stairs, Hilary."
"How nice!" Hilary jumped up. "I want to see her most particularly."