nd give that room to their visitor. But this was
vetoed by Aunt Betsy, who, having finished the back door sill, had now
come around to the front, and, with her scrubbing brush in one hand and
her saucer of sand in the other, held forth upon the foolishness of the
girls.

"Of course if they had a beau, they'd want a t'other room, else where
would they do their sparkin'."

That settled it. The parlor should remain as it was, Katy said, and Aunt
Betsy went on with her scouring, while Helen and Katy consulted together
how to make the huge feather bed seem more like the mattresses such as
Morris had, and such as Mr. Cameron must be accustomed to. Helen's mind
being the most suggestive solved the problem first, and a large
comfortable was brought from the box in the garret and folded carefully
over the bed, which, thus hardened and flattened, "seemed like a
mattress," Katy said, for she tried it, pronouncing it good, and feeling
quite well satisfied with the room when it was finished. And certainly
it was not wholly uninviting with its snowy bed, whose covering almost
swept the floor, its strip of bright carpeting in front, its vase of
flowers upon the stand and its white fringed curtain sweeping back from
the narrow window.

"I'd like to sleep here myself. It looks real nice," was Katy's comment,
while Helen offered no opinion, but followed her sister into the yard
where they were to sweep the grass and prune the early September
flowers.

This afforded Aunt Betsy a chance to reconnoiter and criticise, which
last she did unsparingly.

"What have they done to that bed to make it look so flat? Put on a
bed-quilt, as I'm alive! What children! It would break my back to lie
there, and this Cannon is none the youngest, accordin' to their
tell--nigh on to thirty, if not turned. It will make his bones ache, of
course. I am glad I know better than to treat visitors that way. The
comforter may stay, but I'll be bound I'll make it softer!" and stealing
up the stairs, Aunt Betsy brought down a second feather bed, much
lighter than the one already on, but still large enough to suggest the
thought of smothering. This she had made herself, intending it as a part
of Katy's "setting out," should she ever marry, and as things now seemed
tending that way, it was only right, she thought, that Mr. Cannon, as
she called him, should begin to have the benefit of it. Accordingly, the
handiwork of the girls was destroyed, and two beds, instead o