“I didn’t know artists were ever such practical people,” confessed Mrs. Red Pepper Burns, sitting on the edge of a straight-backed old chair in the small kitchen.  The house boasted but four rooms, two below and two above, with a small enclosure off the kitchen which had been used for a bedroom in the benighted days when people knew no better, and which Charlotte had promptly set aside for a dark room.

“Practical?  I’m not an artist, as you use the word, but I assure you real artists are the most practical people in the world.  Not one of them but can make a whistle out of a pig’s tail, or a queen’s robe out of a sheet and a blue scarf!  What do you think of my light-housekeeping outfit?”

She held up an aluminum skillet which she had just taken from the box she was unpacking.  “Here’s everything we can need in the way of cooking utensils, packed into a foot square, and light as a feather, the whole thing.  My purse was rather light when I had bought it, too.”  She made a funny little grimace, then laughed.  “But my most trying purchase was my tin bath!  You can’t imagine what a hunt I had for it.  But I found it at last in an Englishman’s little out-of-the-way shop, and a big tin ewer to go with it.  I’m proud of them now, and emptying the tub once a day is going to be fine for my muscles.”

“You have splendid courage, dear, and I can see you’re not afraid of hard work.  I want you to promise me this, though, Charlotte.  When you are specially tired, and there’s luncheon or dinner to get, run over and let us give you a trayful of things.  Cynthia always cooks more than we eat, and then has to contrive to use it in other ways.”

Charlotte nodded.  “Thank you.  Luckily, though I’m poor I’m not proud.  By the way, you haven’t an unused kitchen chair, have you?  To tell the truth I forgot several things, and one of them is a chair for the kitchen.  I probably shall not sit down myself, and shall always serve our little meals in the living-room, but I foresee that I shall have guests here in the kitchen, and I’d like to be able to offer them a chair.  That one you’re sitting in is my very best old split-bottomed, high-backed photographer’s treasure, which must go in the front room by the fireplace.”

“When you are through explaining I will assure you that two kitchen chairs will arrive as soon as I go home,” promised Ellen.

“Bless you!  I foresee that you will make a splendid neighbour.  Do you want to climb upstairs and see the nest I’m going to feather for Granny?”

She turned to the narrow little staircase between the walls, and gayly led the way.  But Ellen exclaimed in dismay over the steepness of the stairs.

“Charlotte!  Do you think dear little old Madam Chase can climb these?  They are the steepest I ever saw!”

“She won’t need to.  Private lift, always ready.”

“What do you mean?  Surely not—­”

Charlotte extended two round, supple arms.  “Why not?  Granny weighs just eighty pounds—­if she is wearing plenty of clothes.  In her little nightie and lavender kimono considerably less.  And I’m strong as strong.”