Poor Judy had no such treasure box. She often looked at her sisters' collections with envious eyes and wished for as much as two minutes together that she too had some nice things. Somehow she had never been able to collect things. Her drawer contained nothing but her little old frocks and underwear and holey stockings thrown together in a tousled heap, and perhaps a few pine cones and clam shells and odd pebbles that she had picked up from time to time.
There were several colored pictures on the walls, mostly calendars of previous years, much fly-specked and yellowed on the edges. One of these, an advertisement for some kind of corset, represented the upper two thirds of a young woman with bright pink cheeks and golden hair, attired in a chemise and a straight-front corset and holding an Easter lily in her hand. On one side of the chest of drawers was an old, much faded chromo showing a child with a tremendously large head, dressed in skin-tight red satin breeches and pale blue coat with lace ruffles in front looking at a kitten which was playing with a pink ball on the floor. This picture was enclosed in a frame the ends of which stuck out beyond the picture, forming little crosspieces at each corner. On the floor were several pieces of frayed rag carpet and before the bed an oval braided rag mat.
Luella and Lizzie May spent a good deal of their time in this sanctum, "redding up," looking over their treasures, exchanging confidences and sewing patch-work blocks. But Judith hardly ever went into the room except to go to bed. She liked her father's company and her father's occupations better than those of her sisters. She stood at his side and watched him as he nailed the bright new shoes with the bright new horseshoe nails onto the hoofs of Tom and Bob. When he said, "Whoa!" she said "Whoa!" with a faithful echo of his tone and inflection. She loved to hear the cheerful strokes of the hammer and watch the sparks fly from the piece of old railroad iron which Bill used as an anvil. When he stretched a piece of wire fence she was there to hand him the wire stretchers, the pliers, the hammer, the staples. And whenever he mended spots in the old rail fence she caused Bill much inconvenience by insisting on lifting one end of each rail. She liked to watch and help him when he had a job of carpentry to do, a bench to make, or a shelf or some new chicken coops for the spring broods. She ran and fetched the hammer, the nails, the brace, and bit. She held the ends of boards while he nailed them, dragged up more boards; and all the time she watched eagerly. As he worked Bill chewed tobacco and whistled and now and then broke out into a rather tuneless attempt at a song: