of us must take a few days off and go and hunt up a nice, inexpensive
little Eldorado for us. There!--there, my friends, you have the
solution of your knotty little problem in a nutshell. I gladly give
my 'services' free."

"Who's going?" demanded practical Laura Ann. "Does anybody kindly
volunteer?"

No volunteers. Silence, broken only by the chirp of the cheery little
teakettle. The immense responsibility of setting the Grand Plan in
motion was not to be lightly assumed. The utter vagueness of Billy's
"waste places" was dismaying, to say the least. There might be many
nice, inexpensive little Eldorados waiting to be "bunked" in and
picnicked in, but where? The world was full of places where there were
trees and birds and barns, but to pick out the particular one where
four tired-out young toilers could lay down their tools and rest
_inexpensively_, looked like a big undertaking.

Billy had settled back in her chair with an air of having done her part
and washed her hands of further responsibility. The rest must do their
parts now. Billy, who was the youngest and frailest of the little colony
of workers, had fallen into the way of dropping asleep whenever
opportunity offered; she did so now with a little sigh of contentment.
Her girlish face against the faded crimson back of the chair looked
startlingly white. In her sleep she moved her lips and the others caught
a pathetic little "_one_-two-three-four" dropping from them. Poor
Billy! She was giving a music lesson in her dreams!

Loraine made a little paper shade and shielded her pale face from the
light, and Laura Ann tilted the clumsy patent rocker backward and