"

"Peace! What slang!" cried Faith in genuine horror.

"It's no such thing! It is a bird! She calls it a swan, for it's got a
tall, crooked neck for the foot-board, and if I had it in my room, I'd
hang curtains on its tail. It could be done just splendid! I'll show you
after lunch if you don't b'lieve me."

"Oh, we believe you! Go on. I'm interested in that room," begged Hope,
wondering why she too had not begun with the attic.

"Then on the wall she has a great fish-net full of the prettiest
postcards of Norway and Sweden and De'mark. She's a Swede, you
know,--Gussie is; and her married brother and two sisters and
grandmother still live over there. That's where the fish-net came from.
I didn't have time to stop long to look at the cards 'cause there was so
much else to do 'fore lunch time, but she's invited us to come up some
evening when she's through work and then she'll tell all about them.
There's the loveliest green and yellow quilt on her bed that she made
all herself. She said grandma had a red one for her to use, but it
seemed more like home with her own things, so she uses them instead of
those that b'long to the house. But the prettiest of everything is a
queer little piece of glass hanging in the window which makes her room
look like a real rainbow on sunny days, 'cause the _prison respects_ the
light and sorts out all the colors. Oh, you needn't laugh and think you
know better! Gussie told us all about it, didn't she, Allee?"

"Gussie did not call it a _prison_," Hope could not refrain from saying.
"It is a prism, and it re--it isn't _respects_ the light, grandpa--"

"No. Refracts is the word she wants to use. Peace tries to drink in so
much information that she can't digest it all."

"Maybe that is what's the matter," Peace agreed thoughtfully. "Anyway,
her room is a beauty--lots prettier that Marie's, though Marie has the
same chance of making hers look nice that Gussie has. There's the same
difference in the girls themselves that there is in their rooms, too."

"Why, what do you mean?" cried the astonished mistress of the house,
while the President nodded his head in approval at the child's
observations.

"Well, Gussie is good-natured and 'bliging, while Marie is cross and
grouchy. We hadn't got the knob of her door turned before she ordered us
out of her room and told us to mind our own business."

"Poor childie, I ought to have cautioned you not to go into either of
those attic rooms withou