pleasantest room in the house."

"Couldn't we _make_ the kitchen the pleasantest room?" suggested
Ruth. "Wouldn't it be sure to be, if it was the room we all stayed in
mornings, and where we had our morning work? Whatever room we do that
in always is, you know. The look grows. Kitchens are horrid when girls
have just gone out of them, and left the dish-towels dirty, and the
dish-cloth all wabbled up in the sink, and all the tins and irons
wanting to be cleaned. But if we once got up a real ladies' kitchen of
our own! I can think how it might be lovely!"

"I can think how it might be jolly-nificent!" cried Barbara, relapsing
into her dislocations.

"_You_ like kitchens," said Rosamond, in a tone of quiet ill-usedness.

"Yes, I do," said Barbara. "And you like parlors, and prettinesses,
and feather dusters, and little general touchings-up, that I can't
have patience with. You shall take the high art, and I'll have the low
realities. That's the co-operation. Families are put up assorted, and
the home character comes of it. It's Bible-truth, you know; the head
and the feet and the eye and the hand, and all that. Let's just see
what we _shall_ come to! People don't turn out what they're meant, who
have Irish kitchens and high-style parlors, all alike. There's a great
deal in being Holabirdy,--or whatever-else-you-are-y!"

"If it only weren't for that cellar-kitchen," said Mrs. Holabird.

"Mother," said Ruth, "what if we were to take this?"