"Cost has nothing to do with it. Look!" and Leslie flourished a handful of bills. "See what Guardy Lud gave me! And Allison has another just like it. He said particularly that we were not to let you get all worked out and get sick so you couldn't go with us, and he particularly told us about a lot of things he wanted us to buy to make things easy on the way. After he leaves us and goes back to California we're in your charge, I know; but just now you're in ours, you dear, unselfish darling; and we're going to run you. Oh, we're going to run you to beat the band!" laughed Leslie, and jumped down from her perch to hug and squeeze the breath out of Julia Cloud.
"But child! Dear!" said that good woman when she could get her breath to speak. "You mustn't begin in that extravagant way!"
But they put their hands over her lips, and laughed away her protests until she had to give up for laughing with them.
"Well, then," she said at last, when they had subsided from a regular rough-house frolic for all the world as if they were children, "we'll have to get to work in good earnest; only it doesn't seem right to let you work so hard when you are visiting me."
"Visiting, nothing!" declared Allison; "we're having the time of our lives. I haven't been in a place where I could do as I pleased since I was eight years old. This is real work, and I like it. Come now, don't let's waste any time. What can I do first? Wouldn't you like to have me take down all the pictures on the second floor, stack them in the attic, and sweep down the walls the way we did down here yesterday?"
"Yes," said their aunt with an affectionate homage in her eyes for this dear, capable boy who was so eager over everything as if it were his own.
"And those big bookcases. What are you going to do with the books? Do you want any of them to go with you, or are they to be packed away?"
"No, I won't take any of those books. They'll need to be dusted and put in boxes. There are a lot of boxes in the cellar, and there's a pile of papers to use for lining the boxes. But you'll have your hands full with the pictures, I think. Let the books go till to-morrow."