it is too dear! May I please look at everything, just as though it was in a picture book?"

Helen moved from one place to another in a sort of daze. She tried the little wicker chairs one after another. She sat at the tiny desk and touched the pearl penholders and the pencils with Rosanna's name printed on them in gold letters. All the letter paper said Rosanna in gold letters at the top too; it was beautiful.

The little piano was real. It played delightfully little tinkly notes almost like hitting the rim of a glass with a lead pencil. Helen was charmed. She could scarcely drag herself away to see the other wonders of the playhouse. The little dining-room was built with a bay window, which had a window seat, and a hanging basket of ferns. The little round table, the sideboard and the chairs were all painted a soft cream color, and on each chair back, and the sideboard drawers and doors sprays of tinty, tiny flowers were painted.

Helen hurried from these splendors to the kitchen. And it was a real kitchen!

"If our domestic science teacher could only see this!" groaned Helen.

The room was larger than either of the others, and there was plenty of room for two or three persons, at least for a couple of children and one grown person if she was not so very large. There was a little gas stove complete in every way, a cabinet, and a porcelain top table, as well as a white sink and draining board. The floor was covered with blue and white linoleum, and the walls were papered with blue and white tiled paper with a border of fat little Dutch ships around the top. Little white Dutch curtains hung at the windows.

"Oh my! Oh my!" sighed Helen. "This is the best of all! The other rooms you can only sit in and enjoy, but here you can really do things and learn to be useful."

She opened a little cupboard door and discovered all sorts of pans and kettles made of white enamel with blue edges.

"I never come out here at all," said Rosanna.

"Perhaps they are afraid you will burn yourself," suggested Helen.

"No, the stove is a safe kind, made specially for children's playhouses, but I don't know how to cook, so I don't play in the kitchen at all. Make-believe dinners are no fun."

Helen gave a happy sigh.

"Well, I can cook," she said, "and I will teach you how."

"Won't that be fun!" said Rosanna. She suddenly threw her arms around Helen's neck and kissed her. "Oh, Helen, I am so happy," she said.

CHAPTER IV

After Helen had looked the wonderful kitchen over to her heart's content, the children went back to the pretty living-room, where they examined the books in the little bookcase, and then each carrying a comfy wicker chair, went out on the wide porch. A big grass rug was spread there, and there was a little porch swing and a wicker table.

Rosanna commenced to tell Helen about herself. She told much more than she intended, and by the time she had finished, Helen knew more about her new friend than Rosanna's own grandmother had ever guessed.

Helen herself was a very happy, busy little girl, with wise and loving parents. They were poor, and Mr. Culver had very wisely taken the first position that offered as soon as he came home from France and found that the firm he had formerly worked for had given his position to some one else, a man much less capable than Mr. Culver and who worked willingly for wages that Mr. Culver did not feel like accepting. Yes, they were poor, but as Mr. Culver said, "Just you wait, folkses; this will be fun to remember some day." And Mrs. Culver called it "our school" and told Helen that they must both strive to know the best and easiest way of doing everything while they had to do all for themselves.

Helen's eyes filled with tears when she heard of the death of Rosanna's young father and mother in a railroad accident when she was such a little thing that now she could scarcely remember them.

"And then you came to live with your grandmother?" she said, struggling not to go to Rosanna and hug her tight. A little girl without mother or father! It was too dreadful.

"Yes, she came to the hospital and as soon as I was well—I was just scratched up a little—she brought me here."

"Well," said Helen briskly, "it must be fine to have a grandmother. I suppose grandmothers are 'most exactly as good as mothers," she went on, trying to make light of Rosanna's misfortune. "I expect they cuddle you and play with you and hold you 'most exactly like mothers."

"Mine doesn't," said Rosanna sadly. "She kisses me good-night; at least she holds her cheek so I can kiss her, but she never plays with anybody. And she never holds me: she says I am too big to get on people's laps. But I guess I must have been a big baby because she never did hold me even when I was little. There must be different kinds of grandmothers."

"A little girl I know has one, and my grandmother says that it is a disgrace the way she spoils that child, and she says she wants me to grow up to be an honor to our house. You see I am the only grandchild there is.

"Grandmother had a daughter long ago, but she died when she was only two, and grandmother was married twice and both her husbands died."

"You seem to have quite a dying family," said Helen politely.

"Yes, we have." Rosanna commenced to feel quite proud of the fact now that Helen had mentioned it.

"I have an uncle too, and he 'most died over in France but he is home now."

"My father was there too," said Helen proudly. "He had to give up everything to go, but mother wouldn't let him say that he had to stay home and work for us so he went. Mother went to work typewriting and we lived in three rooms, and I went to school and cooked our suppers at night. Mother used to come home so tired. After the dishes were washed, we used to sit and knit. I learned to knit without looking on, so I could knit and study all at the same time. You are the only friend I have here in Louisville," concluded Helen, "but of course when school begins I will have lots of them."

Rosanna was conscious of a jealous pang. She didn't want this bright-eyed little girl who had just come into her life to have other friends.

"I don't see why you have to have other friends if you have me," she said. "Why can't we play together all the time, and have good times? My grandmother said I was to take you riding every day, and we can have such fun. If you have a lot of other friends, Helen, you won't come here at all."

"Why, yes, I will, Rosanna! You will be my bestest friend of all. But mother says we all need a number of people in our lives because if we don't we will all get to thinking the same things and talking the same way, and it is very bad for us."

"Well, I can't have any," said Rosanna hopelessly. "I told you that before. I suppose if she hadn't had to go to New York, I would never have had you for a friend. That is the way my grandmother is."

"Oh, well," said Helen, "when she gets back we will explain things to her, and I am sure she will get to understand all about things. Why, you just have to have friends, Rosanna, and I want you to have me if you think you like me enough."

"Oh, I do; indeed I do!" cried Rosanna. "I just can't stand it if she doesn't let me have you! We will have such good times, Helen, and I can learn to cook, and we can learn to play duets together and it will be such fun."

"I should say so!" said Helen happily. "And don't you think it would be fun to see what all we can do for ourselves? I mean without asking Minnie. I am sure mother would think it would make us sort of helpless. Of course she is your