Mrs. Carey, with the help of the other two women, had seized upon this stormy Friday, when the teacher always took his luncheon with him to the academy, to convert Ralph’s room into something comfortable and cheerful.  The old, cracked, air-tight stove had been removed, and Bill Harmon had contributed a second-hand Franklin, left with him for a bad debt.  It was of soapstone and had sliding doors in front, so that the blaze could be disclosed when life was very dull or discouraging.  The straw matting on the floor had done very well in the autumn, but Mrs. Carey now covered the centre of the room with a bright red drugget left from the Charlestown house-furnishings, and hung the two windows with curtains of printed muslin.  Ossian Popham had taken a clotheshorse and covered it with red felting, so that the screen, so evolved could be made to hide the bed and washstand.  Ralph’s small, rickety table had been changed for a big, roomy one of pine, hidden by the half of an old crimson piano cloth.  When Osh had seen the effect of this he hurried back to his barn chamber and returned with some book shelves that he had hastily glued and riveted into shape.  These he nailed to the wall and filled with books that he found in the closet, on the floor, on the foot of the bed, and standing on the long, old-fashioned mantel shelf.

“Do you care partic’larly where you set, nights, Ossian?” inquired Mrs. Popham, who was now in a state of uncontrolled energy bordering on delirium.  “Because your rockin’ chair has a Turkey red cushion and it would look splendid in Mr. Thurston’s room.  You know you fiddle ’bout half the time evenin’s, and you always go to bed early.”

“Don’t mind me!” exclaimed Ossian facetiously, starting immediately for the required chair and bringing back with it two huge yellow sea shells, which he deposited on the floor at each end of the hearth rug.

“How do you like ’em?” he inquired of Mrs. Carey.

“Not at all,” she replied promptly.

“You don’t?” he asked incredulously.  “Well, it takes all kinds o’ folks to make a world!  I’ve been keepin’ ’em fifteen years, hopin’ I’d get enough more to make a border for our parlor fireplace, and now you don’t take to ’em!  Back they go to the barn chamber, Maria; Mis’ Carey’s bossin’ this job, and she ain’t got no taste for sea shells.  Would you like an old student lamp?  I found one that I can bronze up in about two minutes if Mis’ Harmon can hook a shade and chimbly out of Bill’s stock.”

They all stayed in the room until this last feat was accomplished; stayed indeed until the fire in the open stove had died down to ruddy coals.  Then they pulled down the shades, lighted the lamp, gave one last admiring look, and went home.

It had meant only a few hours’ thought and labor, with scarcely a penny of expense, but you can judge what Ralph Thurston felt when he entered the door out of the storm outside.  To him it looked like a room conjured up by some magician in a fairy tale.  He fell into the rocking-chair and looked at his own fire; gazed about at the cheerful crimson glow that radiated from the dazzling drugget, in a state of puzzled ecstasy, till he caught sight of a card lying near the lamp,—­“A birthday present from three mothers who value your work for their boys and girls.”