there were hardly anything left but bedsteads and washstands and
bureaus,--the very things that make up-stairs look so _very_ bedroomy.
And we wanted pretty places to sit in, as girls always do. Rosamond
and Barbara made a box-sofa, fitted luxuriously with old pew-cushions
sewed together, and a crib mattress cut in two and fashioned into seat
and pillows; and a packing-case dressing-table, flounced with a skirt
of white cross-barred muslin that Ruth had outgrown. In exchange for
this Ruth bargained for the dimity curtains that had furnished their
two windows before, and would not do for the three they had now.

Then she shut herself up one day in her room, and made them all go
round by the hall and passage, back and forth; and worked away
mysteriously till the middle of the afternoon, when she unfastened all
the doors again and set them wide, as they have for the most part
remained ever since, in the daytimes; thus rendering Ruth's doings and
ways particularly patent to the household, and most conveniently open
to the privilege and second sight of story-telling.

The white dimity curtains--one pair of them--were up at the wide west
window; the other pair was cut up and made over into three or four
things,--drapery for a little old pine table that had come to light
among attic lumber, upon which she had tacked it in neat plaitings
around the sides, and overlapped it at the top with a plain hemmed
cover of the same; a great discarded toilet-cushion freshly encased
with more of it, and edged with magic ruffling; the stained top and
tied-up leg of a little disabled teapoy, kindly disguised in
uniform,--varied only with a narrow stripe of chintz trimming in
crimson arabesque,--made pretty with piles of books, and the Scripture
scroll hung above it with its crimson cord and tassels; and in the
window what she called afterward her "considering-chair," and in which