wo
marooned sailors on a desert island, up here on Hillcrest, if it wasn't
for Lucas Pritchett!"

The girls spent a few anxious days waiting for Aunt Jane's answer. And
meantime they discussed the project of taking boarders from all its
various angles.

"Of course, we can't get boarders yet awhile," sighed 'Phemie. "It's much
too early in the season."

"Why is it? Aren't _we_ glad to be here at Hillcrest?" demanded Lyddy.

"But see what sort of a place we lived in," said her sister.

"And lots of other people live hived up in the cities just as close, only
in better houses. There isn't much difference between apartment-houses
and tenement-houses except the front entrance!"

"That may be epigrammatical," chuckled 'Phemie, "but you couldn't make
many folks admit it."

"Just the same, there are people who need just this climate we've got here
at this time of year. It will do them as much good as it will father."

"You'd make a regular sanitarium of Hillcrest," cried 'Phemie.

"Well, why not?" retorted Lyddy. "I guess the neighbors wouldn't object."

'Phemie giggled. "Advertise to take folks back to old-fashioned times and
old-fashioned cooking."

"Why not?"

"Sleeping on feather beds; cooking in a brick oven like our
great-great-grandmothers used to do! Open fireplaces. Great!"

"Plain, wholesome food. They won't have to eat out of cans. No extras or
luxuries. We could afford to take them cheap," concluded Lyddy, earnestly.
"And we'll get a big garden planted and feed 'em on vegetables through
the summer."

"Oh, Lyddy, it _sounds_ good," sighed 'Phemie. "But do you suppose Aunt
Jane will consent to it?"

They received Aunt Jane's letter in reply to their own, on Saturday.

* * * * *

"You two girls go ahead and do what you please inside or outside
Hillcrest," she wrote, "only don't disturb the old doctor's stuff in
the lower rooms of the east ell. As long as you don't burn the house
down I don't see that you can do any harm. And if you really think
you can find folks foolish enough to want to live up there on the
ridge, six miles from a lemon, why go ahead and do it. But I tell you
frankly, girls, I'd want to be paid for doing it, and paid high!"

Then the kind, if brusk, old lady went on to tell them where to find many
things packed away that they would need if they _did_ succeed in getting
boarders, including stores of linen, and blankets, and the like, a