“I guess all the housework won’t hurt her,” sighed Mrs. Jimson, brushing away a slow tear that was stealing down her cheek.  But at the same moment a ray of hope began to steal into her heart with Gerry’s brisk planning.

“I’d be willing to do anything,” she went on more energetically.  “I ain’t lazy, though folks may think so; but I’ve got plum discouraged.”

“And now you are going to take heart o’ grace and begin again,” declared Mother Brace, coming in with her broom over her shoulder in time to hear the last words.  “I suppose, then, you’re willing to come and scrub my barn floors for me to-morrow morning.  They won’t be very hard, but I can’t get down so long on account of my knee.  I can pay you fifty cents.”

“Oh, I’ll come.”  Mrs. Jimson straightened up so eagerly that she nearly dropped the baby.  “And I’ll get ’em clean, too.  I know how if I don’t look it.”

Telegraphic signs passed between Mother Brace and Gerry by which it was decided to say nothing about the moving at present.  Nevertheless Mrs. Jimson went home much lighter of heart and foot than when she came, though she carried several extra pounds in the way of vegetables and fresh bread.

Hardly was she out of sight when Mrs. Thomas Benton, president of the Ladies’ Aid Society, rapped at the Braces’ front door.

“You see,” she told Gerry when she had recovered her breath, being somewhat portly for so steep a hill, “we’ve heard about your barn plan, and we thought we’d better have a finger in the pie.  So we decided that instead of packing a barrel for the heathen just now we will dress up the Jimson’s, so as to have them match better with their new home.  Oh, we shall do the heathen before long, too; only we thought maybe this was an ‘ought to have done and not leave the other undone.’”

Bright and early next morning Mrs. Jimson was on her knees scrubbing the barn floors, little dreaming that she was helping to lay the foundation for her own future happiness.

She could not have been more thorough, had she known, much to Mother Brace’s satisfaction.

“There’s good stuff in her,” was the verdict.  “She may be a weed, but she’ll pay for cultivating.”

It was nearly a week before the barn was ready, a week so busy that Gerry’s bones ached when she stretched them in bed each night, but so happy that she cared not at all for the aches.  Aunt Serinda’s James toiled up and down the hill with the long wagon loaded more than once; Ruthie’s loving fingers flew upon the ruffles and frills; Gerry and her mother set things straight, nailing and tacking diligently; and gradually the barn became transformed.

“It’s blossomed like the rose!” Gerry announced joyously.  “It isn’t a barn any longer; it’s a cottage.  Oh, mother, it’s better than a cottage; it’s a home.”

Oh, it was very plain and simple; to some it might even have seemed bare, in spite of Ruthie’s pretty things.  But to Gerry, with the tumble-down house fresh in her memory, it was all that could be desired.