If only she were brave enough to face that grinning demon! Should she be sensible, or should she let herself be weak and unintelligent? Intelligent, that was what father wanted them all to be, it was his favorite expression, “Be intelligent.”

25 The others began to chatter about other things while they were finishing supper and washing the dishes afterward, but although Ann took part in the work and the jokes and laughter and all the anticipations of a great time to-morrow, she could think in the back of her mind of nothing but the ship. If Jo would help them, she and Ben would try to find out all about the wreck. It would be much more fun than hunting imaginary Indians and bears in the woods.

25

After supper had been cleared away and the sweet old kitchen put in order, all the Seymours trooped through every room in the house, patting the wide soft feather beds that stood so high from the floor that a little flight of steps was needed to climb into them.

“A tiny stepladder beside my bed!” exclaimed Helen. “What fun! I love this house.”

The unaccustomedness of the quaint old furniture, the wide floor boards polished with age, the small-paned windows, the bulky mahogany chests of drawers that smiled so kindly as they waited for the children’s clothes to be unpacked, all these things crowded the ship out of Helen’s mind. She went to bed perfectly happy.

“Don’t you fall out,” called Ben from his room, “because if you should you’d break your leg, probably, you’re so high.”

“I couldn’t fall out,” Helen called back. “You wait until you try your bed. It seemed high before26 I got in, but I sank away down and down into a nest; I think I’ll pretend I am a baby swan to-night with billows of my mother swan’s feathers all about me to keep me warm. I never slept in such a funny bed, but I like it!”

26

And then Helen’s voice trailed off into silence.

In each room the Seymours found a lamp trimmed and filled ready for use, with its glass chimney as spotlessly clear as the glass of a lighthouse.

“How kind the Baileys are!” exclaimed Mrs. Seymour gratefully. “I don’t feel as if we were renting this house; Jo and his father seem like old friends already.”

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