e--a very good sleeping-room indeed--and on the bedstead in this
room were stacked, one on top of another, at least a dozen feather beds.

Each bed was wrapped in sheets of tarred paper--hermetically sealed from
moths or other insect life.

"Oh, for goodness sake, Lyd!" cried 'Phemie, "let's take one of these to
sleep on. There are pillows, too; but we've got _them_. Say! we can put
one of these beds on top of the straw tick and be in comfort at last."

"All right. But the feather bed would be pretty warm for summer use,"
sighed Lyddy, as she helped her sister lift down one of the
beds--priceless treasures of the old-time housewife.

"Country folk--some of them--sleep on feathers the year 'round,"
proclaimed 'Phemie. "Perhaps your summer boarders can be educated up to
it--or _down_ to it."

"Well, we'll try the 'down' and see how it works," agreed Lyddy. "My!
these feathers are pressed as flat as a pancake. The bed must go out into
the sun and air and be tossed once in a while, so that the air will get
through it, before there'll be any 'life' in these feathers. Now, don't
try to do it all, 'Phemie. I'll help you downstairs with it in a minute.
I just want to look into the big garret while we're up here. Dear me!
isn't it dusty?"

Such an attractive-looking assortment of chests, trunks, old presses,
boxes, chests of drawers, decrepit furniture, and the like as was set
about that garret! There was no end of old clothing hanging from the
rafters, too--a forest of garments that would have delighted an old clo'
man; but----

"Oo! Oo! Ooo!" hooted 'Phemie. "Look at the spider webs. Why, I wouldn't
touch those things for the whole farm. I bet there are fat old spiders up
there as big as silver dollars."

"Well, we can keep away from that corner," said Lyddy, with a shudder. "I
don't want old coats and hats. But I wonder what _is_ in those drawers. We
shall want bed linen if we go into the business of keeping boarders."

She tried to open some of the nearest presses and bureaus, but all were
locked. So, rather dusty and disheveled, they retired to the floor below,
between them managing to carry the feather bed out upon the porch where
the sun could shine upon it.

At noon Lyddy "buzzed" Lucas, as 'Phemie called it, about the way folk in
the neighborhood cooked with an open fire, and especially about the use
of the brick oven that was built into the side of the chimney.

"That air contraption," confessed the young f