lead the way up the
stairs to the attic and again stand and wait. We know what is
coming, and, as we revel in the expressions of admiration evoked, we
again declaim with enormous pride: "We made it all ourselves!"

There is a solid satisfaction in making a room, especially for an
amateur who hardly expects to undertake room-making as a profession.
We regard our room as an original creation produced by our own
genius, not likely to be duplicated in our personal experience. It
grew in this wise:

When we came to the bungalow last spring the family numbered three
instead of the two of the year before. Now number three, a healthy
and bouncing young woman, necessitated a "sleeping-in" maid if her
parents were ever to be able to detach themselves from her person.
We had never had a sleeping-in maid at the bungalow before and the
problem of where to put her was a serious one. We well knew that no
self-respecting servant would condescend to sleep in an attic,
although the attic was cool, airy and comfortable. We rather
thought, too, that the maid might despise us if we gave her the
bedroom and took up our quarters under the rafters. It would be an
easy enough matter for carpenters and plasterers to put a room in
the attic, but we lacked the money necessary for such a venture. And
so we puzzled. At first we thought of curtains, but the high winds
which visit us made curtains impracticable. Then we thought of
tacking the curtains top and bottom, and from this the idea
evolved. The carpenter whom we consulted proved to be amenable to
suggestion and agreed to put us up a framework in a day. We helped.
We outlined the room on the floor. This took two strips of wood
about one and a half by two inches. The other two sides of the room
were formed by the wall of the attic and by the meeting place of the
roof and floor--that is, there was in reality no fourth wall; the
room simply ended where floor and roof met. Two strips were nailed
to the rafters in positions similar to those on the floor, and then
an upright strip was inserted and nailed fast at intervals of every
three feet. This distance was decided by the fact that curtain
materials usually come a yard wide. For a door we used a discarded
screen-door, which, having been denuded of th