put on the fire, and the black, awkward shadows of three figures leaped out of the bare wall and danced there in the ruddy gloom. Bedtime loomed nearer and nearer as a grave problem, and Ken and Felicia were silent, each wondering how the floor could be made softest.

"The Japanese sleep on the floor," Ken said, "and they have blocks of wood for pillows. Our bags are the size, and, I imagine, the consistency, of blocks of wood. N'est-ce pas, oui, oui?"

"I'd rather sleep on a rolled-up something-or-other out of my bag than on the bag itself, any day--or night," Felicia remarked.

"As you please," Ken said; "but act quickly. Our brother yawns."

"Bedtime, honey," Felicia laughed to Kirk. "Even queerer than supper-time was."

"A bed by night, a hard-wood floor by day," Ken misquoted murmurously.

"Hard-wood!" Felicia sniffed. "Hard wood!"

The problem now arose: which was most to be desired, an overcoat under you to soften the floor, or on top of you to keep you warm?

"If he has my overcoat, it'll do both," Ken suggested. "Put his sweater on, too." "But what'll you do?" Kirk objected.

"Roll up in your overcoat, of course," Ken said.

This also entertained Kirk.

"No, but really?" he said, sober all at once.

"Don't you fret about me. I'll haul it away from you after you're asleep."

And Kirk snuggled into the capacious folds of Ken's Burberry, apparently confident that his brother really would claim it when he needed it.

Ken and Felicia sat up, feeding the fire occasionally, until long after Kirk's quiet breathing told them that he was asleep.

"Well, we've made rather a mess of things, so far," Ken observed, somewhat cheerlessly.

"We were ninnies not to think that none of the stuff would have come," Felicia said. "We'll have to do something before to-morrow night. This is all right for once, but--!"

"Goodness knows when the things will come," said Ken, poking at the fore-stick. "The old personage said that all the freight, express, everything, comes by that weird trolley-line, at its own convenience."

"Shouldn't you think that they'd have something dependable, in a summer place?" Felicia signed. "Oh, it seems as if we'd been living for years in houses with no furniture in them. And the home things will simply rattle, here."

"I wish we could have brought more of them," Ken said. "We'll have to rout around to-morrow and buy an oil-stove or something and a couple of chairs to sit on. Ah hum! Let's turn in, Phil. We've a tight room and a fire, anyhow. Shall you be warm enough?"

"Plenty. I've my coat, and a sweater. But what are you going to do?"

"Oh, I'll sit up a bit longer and stoke. And really, Kirk's overcoat spreads out farther than you'd think. He's tallish, nowadays."

Felicia discovered that there are ways and ways of sleeping on the floor. She found, after sundry writhings, the right way, and drifted off to sleep long before she expected to.

Ken woke later in the stillness of the last hours of night. The room was scarcely lit by the smoldering brands of the fire; its silence hardly stirred by the murmurous hissing of the logs. Without, small marsh frogs trilled their silver welcome to the spring, an unceasing jingle of tiny bell-notes. Kirk was cuddled close beside Ken, and woke abruptly as Ken drew him nearer.

"You didn't take your overcoat," he whispered.

"We'll both have it, now," his brother said. "Curl up tight, old man; it'll wrap round the two of us."

"Is it night still?" Kirk asked.

"Black night," Ken whispered; "stars at the window, and a tree swaying across it. And in here a sort of dusky lightness--dark in the corners, and shadows on the walls, and the fire glowing away. Phil's asleep on the other side of the hearth, and she looks very nice. And listen--hear the toads?"

"Is that what they are? I thought it was a fairy something. They make nice noises! Where do they live?"

"In some marsh. They sit there and fiddle away on bramble roots and sing about various things they like."

"What nice toads!" murmured Kirk.

"Sh-sh!" whispered Ken; "we're waking Phil. Good night--good morning, I mean. Warm enough now?"

"Yes. Oh, Ken, aren't we having fun?"

"Aren't we, though!" breathed his brother, pulling the end of the Burberry over Kirk's shoulders.

The sun is a good thing. It clears away not only the dark shadows in the corners of empty rooms, but also the gloom that settles in anxious people's minds at midnight. The rising of the sun made, to be sure, small difference to Kirk, whose mind harbored very little gloom, and was lit principally by the spirits of those around him. Consequently, when his brother and sister began reveling in the clear, cold dawn, Kirk executed a joyous little pas seul in the middle of the living-room floor and set off on a tour of exploration. He returned from it with his fingers very dusty, and a loop of cobwebs over his hair.

"It's all corners," he said, as Felicia caught him to brush him off, "and steps. Two steps down and one up, and just when you aren't 'specting it."

"You'd better go easy," Ken counseled, "until you've had a personally conducted tour. You'll break your neck."

"I'm being careful. And I know already about this door. There's a kink in the wall and then a hump in the floor-boards just before you get there. It's an exciting house."

"That it is!" said Ken, reaching with a forked stick for the handle of the galvanized iron pail which sat upon the fire. Nobody ever heard of boiling eggs in a galvanized iron pail but that is exactly what the Sturgises did. The pail, in an excellent state of preservation, had been found in the woodshed. The pump yielded, unhesitatingly, any amount of delicious cold water, and though three eggs did look surprisingly small in the bottom of the pail, they boiled quite as well as if they'd been in a saucepan.

"Only think of all the kettles and things I brought!" Felicia mourned. "We'll have to buy some plates and cups, though, Ken." Most of the Sturgis china was reposing in a well-packed barrel in a room over Mr. Dodge's garage, accompanied by many other things for which their owners longed.

"How the dickens do we capture the eggs!" Ken demanded. "Pigs in clover's not in it. Lend a hand, Phil!"

CHAPTER V

THE WHEELS BEGIN TO TURN

Ken walked to Asquam almost immediately after breakfast, and Felicia explored their new abode most thoroughly, inside and out. Corners and steps there were in plenty, as Kirk had said; it seemed as if the house had been built in several pieces and patched together. Two biggish rooms downstairs, besides the kitchen; a large, built-in, white-doored closet in the living-room,--quite jolly, Felicia thought,--rusty nails driven in unbelievable quantities in all the walls. She couldn't imagine how any one could have wanted to hang anything in some of the queer places where nails sprouted, and she longed to get at them with a claw-hammer.

Upstairs there was one big room (for Ken and Kirk, Phil thought), a little one for herself, and what she immediately named "The Poke-Hole" for trunks and such things. When Mother came home, as come she must, the extra downstairs room could be fitted up for her, Felicia decided--or the boys could take it over for themselves. The upstairs rooms were all under the eaves, and, at present, were hot and musty. Felicia pounded open the windows which had small, old-fashioned panes, somewhat lacking in putty. In came the good April air fresh after the murk of yesterday, and smelling of salt, and heathy grass, and spring. It summoned Felicia peremptorily, and she ran downstairs and out to look at the "ten acres of land, peach and apple orchards."

Kirk went, too, his hand in hers.

"It's an easy house," he confided. "You'd