t its first stream into them was a great occasion. The family
assembled in the yard, with Elise Hathaway, who had been allowed to come
over for a few minutes with Betty. Bob and his plumber friend pumped,
and Emily climbed to the attic window, which overlooked the row of
hogsheads, ranged so that the water would flow from one to the other,
and acted as pilot to the new enterprise. As the first stream from the
force pump, which Bob had lavishly painted red, crept its way up the
pipes and began to wet the bottom of the first and highest hogshead
Emily gave a little squeal of delight and shouted "It's come! It's come!
The water's come!" and the family below fairly held their breath with
the wonder of it. Not that such a thing could be, but that their own
freckled, grinning Bob should have been able to achieve it.

There was an elaborate system of tin conductors which conveyed the waste
water from the bathtub out through a hole in the wall of the little
laundry bathroom, and distributed it along the garden beds wherever its
controller desired to irrigate. Thus the system became practical as well
as a luxury. There was also an arrangement of gutter pipes for carrying
off any surplus water from the hogsheads, so saving the Carson house
from possible inundation at any time of heavy storms.

After the plumbing was finished Bob painted the laundry neatly inside
with beautiful white paint and robin's-egg blue for the ceiling, and
Betty told him it almost made one think of going swimming in the ocean.
Next he began to talk about a shower bath. Betty told him what one was
like and he began to spend more days down at the plumber's asking
questions and picking up odd bits of pipe, making measurements, and
doing queer things to an old colander for experiment's sake. The day
that Warren Reyburn came for the first time Bob had the shower part
finished and ready to erect, and the next day saw it complete with a rod
for the rubber curtain that Betty had promised to make for him. He and
she were planning how they would make further improvements on the house
before Jane and Nellie should come home for their summer vacation week.
Betty had thoroughly entered into the life of the little household now,
and was a part of it. She saved her own small wages, and grudged all
she had to spend for necessary clothes, that she might contribute
further to the comfort and beauty of the general home.

After Warren Reyburn's visit the last barrier between