"We won't have you catching cold the very first morning," she said. "That
would be a bad story to send back to papa."

She found Mrs. Watson in very low spirits about her room.

"It's not that it's small," she said. "I don't need a very big room; but I
don't like being poked away at the back so. I've always had a front room
all my life. And at Ellen's in the summer, I have a corner chamber, and
see the sea and everything--It's an elegant room, solid black walnut with
marble tops, and--Lighthouses too; I have three of them in view, and they
are really company for me on dark nights. I don't want to be fussy, but
really to look out on nothing but a side yard with some trees--and they
aren't elms or anything that I'm used to, but a new kind. There's a thing
out there, too, that I never saw before, which looks like one of the giant
ants' nests of Africa in 'Morse's Geography' that I used to read about
when I was--It makes me really nervous."

Clover went to the window to look at the mysterious object. It was a
cone-shaped thing of white unburned clay, whose use she could not guess.
She found later that it was a receptacle for ashes.

"I suppose _your_ rooms are front ones?" went on Mrs. Watson, querulously.

"Mine isn't. It's quite a little one at the side. I think it must be just
under this. Phil's is in front, and is a nice large one with a view of
the mountains. I wish there were one just like it for you. The doctor says
that it's very important for him to have a great deal of air in his room."

"Doctors always say that; and of course Dr. Hope, being a friend of yours