Began gently floating down again
Began gently floating down again
Began gently floating down again
"No, I can't," replied her sister, who was now down about the level of the tops of the pictures. "I'm coming down all the time. And if I were you, Margaret," she added hastily, "I'd only take two of those bubbles—or one. I'm rathertoolight. It's a good thing I didn't take all six of them or I might have gone straight up to the ceiling and had to stay there, crawling about like a fly. I wonder if—hand me the lemonade, will you?"
Margaret dragged a chair to the spot, jumped upon it and handed up the half-glass of lemonade to her sister. Frances, however, did not take the glass in her hand; she took the straws, and leaning forward, tried to drink the lemonade. But though Margaret stood on tip-toe and reached up as far as she could, Frances was still about four inches too high, so she waited a minute until she had come down a little further when she tried again. This time she succeeded, finding, as she had expected, that at every swallow she came down more and more quickly, until presently her feet touched the floor again, when, as she was still rather bouncy, she took hold of the edge of the table to steady herself, and said:
"I'll tell you what you'd better do, Margaret:Take only one of those bubbles at a time and see if it isn't enough. I'm a good deal too light; I shall have to put some stones in my pocket, or something. I'm afraid, if I were to go out of doors, the wind might blow me into the sea. So just take one first, Margaret, and see how that does."
This seemed like good advice, so Margaret, taking the tweezers, caught one bubble and ate it up.
"M-m-m," she murmured, just as Frances had done. "That is good. There's preserved ginger in it, too, and I think there's just a taste of baked apples. Oh! Isn't it a funny feeling!"—stretching out her arms and dancing about—"I wonder if I could jump up to the ceiling like you did."
But she found she could not; though to jump over a big settee in the middle of the room was the easiest thing possible.
"Oh, how nice it is to be so light-footed!" she cried. "One bubble is just enough, Frances; that was a good idea of yours. But what are we going to do to make you a bit heavier? There are no stones here to put into your pockets; and you have only one pocket, anyhow. You'd be all lopsided. You'll have to eat something. That's the only way I see."
"Yes," responded Frances, "that's the only way; and what we need is something heavy, like that littleloaf of bread you and I made once for Daddy, don't you remember, and he begged to be excused, because home-made bread sometimes gave him the nightmare, and so we gave it to Kim—that time he howled so in the night, and Daddy had to get up and throw his hair-brush at him."
"Yes, I remember," replied her sister. "That's the sort of thing we want. Let's look at the list here and see if there's anything likely to do. Ah! 'Pound cake'! That ought to be just the thing."
"Pound cake is rather rich, isn't it?" asked Frances.
"I'm afraid it is. Well, here's 'Half-pound cake, for infants and invalids.' The very thing. We'll have that."
She touched the button; open flew the cupboard, and there inside it was a neat little cake with a silver knife to cut it.
"Now," said Margaret, cutting a slice and handing it to her sister. "Eat that and see if it will do."
Still holding to the table for fear she should bob up again to the ceiling unexpectedly, Frances ate about half the slice, when she laid down the rest, remarking:
"I think that's enough, Margaret. I don't feel quite so much like a dandelion seed as I did. Takemy hand and let us skip down the room and back, just to try."
Down the room they skipped, hand in hand, and back again, jumping over the settee on the way and coming lightly down on the carpet, "Like a pair of soap-bubbles," as Frances put it.
"Just exactly," Margaret agreed. "I feel like you feel in a dream sometimes, when you just tap your foot on the floor or your fingers on the backs of the chairs and go floating about the room. How glad I am you asked for aëro-plane water, Frances, or we might never—Come in!"
Somebody had tapped at the door, and on Margaret's calling, "Come in," the two little maids appeared once more, courtesying politely, to inquire if the ladies were ready to put on their wreaths and slippers.
"Wreaths!" cried Margaret.
"Slippers!" cried Frances. "We didn't bring any wreaths and slippers."
At this, one of the little maids, whose name, they found, was Anita, smiled and nodded, and going to a cupboard in the wall which the children had not noticed before, she came back with two cardboard boxes, one of which she handed to each little girl.
"Are we to open them?" asked Margaret.
"If you please, Miss," replied Anita.
Each box proved to contain a beautiful wreath made of enameled pink leaves with silver berries—both exactly alike.
"Oh! Aren't they pretty!" exclaimed Frances. "Are we to wear them?"
"Yes, Miss, if you please," replied the little waiting-maid. "All the court ladies wear wreaths and slippers to match. These are your slippers," running to the cupboard and bringing back two pairs of white satin slippers with big pink rosettes on them. "The King hopes you'll like them."
"The King is very kind," replied Margaret. "Yes, these will do beautifully."
"Then, if Your Ladyships are ready, will you please to follow us?"
So saying, Anita threw open the door, when she and the other little maid, taking hands, went skipping off down a wide hallway, Margaret and Frances skipping after them and poor little Periwinkle with a serious countenance galloping behind, until they arrived at the top of a long flight of steps down which they went, six steps at a time, to find the Admiral and the Court Crier waiting for them.
"Quite ready, Ladies?" asked the Admiral. "Then we'll join the garden-party at once."