They had no money to purchase horse or cow or pig, and no man in
the family to take care of them if purchased; so the removal of stalls
and all the necessary appurtenances for the care of cattle was no source
of grief or loss to them. A good floor had been laid over the old one
and stained to a dark color; the ceiling, with its heavy hand-hewn
beams, was almost as fine as some old oak counterpart in an English
hall. Not a new board met the eye;--old weathered lumber everywhere,
even to the quaint settle-shaped benches that lined the room. There was
a place like an old-fashioned "tie-up" for musicians to play for a
country dance, or for tableaux and charades; in fine, there would be,
with the addition of Carey ideas here and there, provision for frolics
and diversions of any sort. You no sooner opened the door and peeped in,
though few of the Beulah villagers had ever been invited to do so by the
gay young Hamiltons, than your tongue spontaneously exclaimed: "What a
place for good times!"
"I shall 'come out' here," Nancy announced, as the three girls stood in
the centre of the floor, surrounded by bedsteads, tables, bureaus, and
stoves. "Julia, you can 'debut' where you like, but I shall 'come out'
here next summer!"
"You'll be only seventeen; you can't come out!" objected Julia
conventionally.
"Not in a drawing room, perhaps, but perfectly well in a barn. Even you
and Kitty, youthful as you will still be, can attend my coming out
party, in a barn!"
"It doesn't seem proper to think of giving entertainments when everybody
knows our circumstances,--how poor we are!" Julia said rebukingly.
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