sirable that every one
should utilize whatever faculty or accomplishment he or she possessed,
and the result was certainly good. The big, homelike room, with its
well-chosen colors and look of taste and individuality, left nothing to
be desired in the way of comfort, and was far prettier and more original
than if ordered cut-and-dried from some artist in effects, to whom its
doing would have been simply a job and not an enjoyment.

Clover's wedding presents had furnished part of the rugs and etchings
and bits of china which ornamented the room, but Elsie's, who had
married into a "present-giving connection," as her sister Johnnie called
it, did even more. Each sister was supposed to own a private
sitting-room, made out of the little sleeping-chambers of what Clarence
Page stigmatized as the "beggarly bachelor days," which were thrown
together two in one on either side the common room. Clover and Elsie had
taken pains and pleasure in making these pretty and different from each
other, but as a matter of fact the "private" parlors were not private at
all; for the two families were such very good friends that they
generally preferred to be together. And the rooms were chiefly of use
when the house was full of guests, as in the summer it sometimes was,
when Johnnie had a girl or two staying with her, or a young man with a
tendency toward corners, or when Dr. Carr wanted to escape from his
young people and analyze flowers at leisure or read his newspaper in
peace and quiet.

The big room in the middle was used by both families as a dining and
sitting place. Behind it another had been added, which served as a sort
of mixed library, office, dispensary, and storage-room, and over the
four, extending to the very edge of the wide verandas which flanked the
house on three sides, were six large bedrooms. Of these each family
owned three, and they had an equal right as well to the spare rooms in
the building which had once been the kitchen. One of these, called
"Phil's room," was kept as a matter of course for the use of that young
gentleman, who, while nominally studying law in an office at St.
Helen's, contrived to get out to the Valley very frequently. The
interests of the party were so identical that the matter of ownership
seldom came up, and signified little. The sisters divided the
house-keeping between them amicably, one supplementing the other; the
improvements were paid for out of a common purse; their guests, being
equal