no!" ejaculated Archie, sitting up and shutting his
knife. "That's the very thing I came to find out!"

"Very well," said Polly, twinkling. "Then, of course, you will pay close
attention. It will do you more good than carving Andover on the benches.
There's not much space left on them, now, and it's still early in the
season. Catherine, will you tell us the object of the meeting? Ouch!"
for Archie had reached lazily behind her and given one of her yellow
braids a gentle yank.

"You all know, already," began Catherine, "except perhaps Archie! We've
talked it over with the older people, and they think it's perfectly
practical, only some one or some organization has to take it in charge."

"What's 'it'?" asked Archie innocently.

"Why, the library. The Boat Club is going to see that Winsted has a
public library."

"Turn into Carnegies?" inquired Max, doing a sketch of Geraldine
Winthrop on the margin of the secretary's book.

"Not exactly. We haven't got our own dock built yet, and I don't think
we are in a position to endow libraries. But I mean we can work and
talk--"

"Talking's work," complained Archie. "That's redundancy."

"It is, when you keep interrupting," cried Bertha Davis. "Go on,
Catherine. Don't mind him. Just how can we work?"

"Well, the room will have to be cleaned thoroughly, and we girls can do
most of that if the boys will help a little. And there will have to be
some plain shelves put up for the books."

"Me for the carpenter job!" cried a long-legged youth who had lain thus
far in the shade of his own hat, in entire silence and apparent
unconsciousness. "It's just what I want to cure my brain fever."

"Overstudy? Or overwork reading postals last week?" asked Agnes, smiling
into Bert's half-shut eyes.

"It's more likely fatty degeneration of the brain, if it's Bert Wyman
that has it," said an emphatic voice, and a spruce energetic maiden
joined the group. "I just got in on the 10:10, and Mother said you were
all over here. What's before the house?"

"Nothing. We're all on the house," explained Archie dryly, but Polly
answered the question with careful courtesy. Dorcas listened.

"Very well," she said, when Polly finished. "If it is in order, I move
you, Madam President, that we proceed to clean the library at once."

"O, Dorcas, not to-day!" groaned two or three, while Max remarked in an
aside to no one that if it was in order it shouldn't need cleaning.

"Why not to-day?" asked Dorc