“My father likes a place to be beautiful as well as useful,” said Eleanor, “so he had those lawns made when we built the house.  All the farmers in the neighborhood thought it was an awful waste of good land, but since then some of them have come to see that if they ever wanted to sell their places people would like them better if they were pretty, and they’ve copied this place a good deal in the neighborhood.

“We’re very glad, because right now Cheney County is the prettiest farming section anywhere around, and the crops are about the best in the state, too.  So, you see, we seem to have shown them that they can have pretty places and still make money.  And sometimes those lawns are used for grazing sheep, so they’re useful as well as ornamental.”

Then in a few minutes they were at the house, and the smiling housekeeper, whom Eleanor introduced to the girls as Mrs. Farnham, greeted them.

“Come right in,” she said, heartily.  “There’s supper ready and waiting—­fried chicken, and corn bread, and honey, and creamed potatoes, and fresh milk, and apple pie and—­”

“Stop, stop, do, Mrs. Farnham!” pleaded Eleanor.  “You’ll make me so hungry that I won’t want to wash my hands!”

And the supper, when they came to it, was just as good to taste as it was to hear about.  Everything they ate, it seemed, came from the farm.  No store goods were ever used on the table in that house.  And Bessie, used to a farm where chickens, except when they were old and tough, were never eaten, but kept for sale, wondered at the goodness of everything.

That night, although it was not part of the plan, there was an informal camp fire, held about a blazing pyre of logs.  But it did not last long, for everyone was tired and ready indeed for the signal that Eleanor gave early by lifting her voice in the notes of the good-night song, Lay Me to Sleep in Sheltering Flame.

Bessie, rather to her surprise, found that she was not to room with Margery Burton, or Minnehaha, as she had expected, but was to share a big room, under the roof, with Dolly Ransom, the merry, mischievous Kiama, as she was known to her comrades of the fire.

“Do you mind if I snore?” asked Dolly promptly, when they were alone together.  “Because I probably shall, and everyone makes such a fuss, and acts as if it was my fault.”

“I’m so tired I shan’t even hear you,” said Bessie, with a laugh.  “Snore all you like, I won’t mind!”

Dolly looked surprised, and pouted a little.

“If you don’t mind, there’s no use doing it,” she said, after a moment, and Bessie laughed again at this unconscious confession.

“I thought you couldn’t help it,” she said with a smile.

Dolly looked a little confused.

“I can’t sometimes, when I’ve got a cold,” she said.  “But they go on so about it then that I have sometimes tried to do it, just to get even.”

“You’re a tease, Kiama,” said Bessie, merrily, “and I guess it’s that that you can’t help.  But go ahead and try to tease me as much as you like.  I won’t mind.”