CHAPTER XIV
Tantewas going to have a birthday. It was the Twins who let out the secret which they had been charged to keep. But it is easy to understand how, while it is hard enough foroneperson to keep a secret, it must be twice as hard when you aretwo!
“What shall we do to celebrate Tante’s birthday?” asked Beverly, consulting the Club. In view of her relation to the person in question, Nancy declined to act as chairman. There were six in conclave, Nelly Sackett being absent, for this was a hurry-up call. The birthday was only two days distant, the family secret having been well kept till now.
“We must have something jolly, where everybody can do something,” suggested Cicely. Someone spoke of a play; but theyagreed that would take too long to prepare. Somebody else thought a surprise party would be nice. But then everyone would not be taking part. Tante must be in it too.
“Let’s have a dress-up party! I know what I want to be!” It was of course Norma’s idea. Norma was always acting out some part or “trying something on to prettify herself,” as Dick said.
The suggestion appealed to the Club at once. “Let’s ask Tante if she would like it,” said Beverly. And Tante said she should like it very much indeed. She too had always enjoyed dressing up. There would be a full moon, and they could parade and dance or do whatever they liked out of doors under the trees in the early evening.
At first Hugh and Victor demurred. The idea of dressing-up seemed silly to them. “We’ll look on,” they said, man-like.
“Oh no! Everybody must be in costume!” declared Tante. “Nobody can be a mere spectator at my party. I am sure you can find something to wear without much trouble; just to please me!”
“All right!” said Victor with a sudden grin. “I have an idea.” Then Hugh said he had an idea too—adark secret! As for Reddy, he could hardly wait, he was so eager to get into his costume.
“What about Nelly Sackett?” asked Beverly. “We must let her know in time to get ready.”
“Of course,” agreed Nancy. “She will have to hurry, if she has only to-morrow to fix her costume, by herself. She said she was not coming over to-day. Can’t someone take time to let her know?”
“I’ll go over and tell her,” said Anne unexpectedly. “I was going any way to see my rabbit, Plon.”
“You can ask Nelly to stay all night,” suggested Mrs. Batchelder. “We can put her up somewhere. We have done it before.”
“She can have my bed,” said Beverly eagerly. “I will sleep on the floor.”
“No, I will,” said Anne, after a minute.
“Well, you can settle that later,” suggested Tante. “You can even pull your two cots together and make them up crosswise for three. Once when I was a little girl I wentvisiting with some of my cousins, and seven of us girls slept in one bed! To be sure that was in the days of the big old-fashioned bedsteads, which were like arks.”
“I’ll paddle you around in the canoe, Anne, if you like,” offered Dick. “I’ve agreed to go to the Harbor for the mail. And I’ll call for you on the way back.”
“That would be very nice,” said Anne gratefully.
“Dick is going to buy a costume at the Harbor; no fair!” cried Norma.
“Let’s make it a rule that nobody shall buy anything new. Let’s put together our costumes entirely out of whatever we already have,” said Tante, who knew how very little pocket money most of the campers had.
“Or whatever we can find, or make out of nothing?” added Nancy.
“Or borrow?” suggested Anne. “We can borrow or lend, can’t we?”
“Of course!” they chorused. Already they had an eye on one another’s possessions. “But don’t anyone tell what you are going to be,” cautioned Nancy.
So it was agreed.
The girls scattered in various directions. Anne went straight to the store-room and rummaged in the trunks which she had not opened since she came to Round Robin. “I thought I might have a chance to wear this,” she said exultingly to herself, as she drew out a shimmering mass from its tissue-paper folds. “Mother said it was nonsense to bring a Columbine dress down here. But now I am glad I did. Nobody will have anything half so fine. Now let’s see if I can’t find something for Nelly. It would be nice to help her out. I expect she hasn’t anything that would do to wear.”
Anne went on rummaging. “Why, here’s that nun’s costume!” she said presently. “I didn’t know Mother put that in, it’s so ugly. I wonder if Nelly would care about that? She could wear anything underneath and be comfortable. I think I will take it over to her.”
Anne folded up the nun’s costume and tucked it under her arm. Dick was waiting in the canoe. “Hello!” he called as she came down the path. “What you got there? Acostume for Nelly, I bet! Going to dress her up as a guardian angel or something?” Anne stopped short and hesitated.
“Wait a minute,” she said, turning in the path. “I’ve got to go back for something, Reddy.” When she came down the path again she had quite a different bundle under her arm; a package in white tissue paper.
“That looks still more like an angel’s robe than the other did,” grinned Dick. But Anne did not tell him what it was.
As soon as they were off in the canoe Dick began to ask Anne more questions about her adventure on the mountain, which had made a great impression on his imagination. He had already bothered her so much that she grew impatient whenever he returned to the subject. Which direction was the cave? What did the place look like when she came down the mountain? Had she noticed which way the sun was? Weren’t there any landmarks? Did the man look like a pirate? If pirates were in the wind Dick wanted to be the one to find them. Anne was vague, but she stuck to one point.
“It was a long way from here; it took at least half an hour to come. And we came from thesouth—no, not from the north, Reddy!”
“You must have walked miles off the trail to get down to the south of the mountain,” Dick persisted. “I can’t understand it!” But Anne reminded him that he had met her returning from the south of the camp, which he couldn’t deny.
“I don’t see through it!” muttered Dick, completely mystified. He had scoured every foot of shore from Round Robin to the Harbor, and for miles beyond. But no cave could he find. When he asked discreet questions of the natives like Lonny Maguire, the ablest fisherman of them all, or of Hopkins the lighthouse keeper, who had always lived here, they shook their heads and said they didn’t know of any cave on the main-land at the foot of the mountain.
“They would be likely to know if there was such a cave, now wouldn’t they?” argued Dick. He began to believe that Anne had been dreaming.
But Anne only said positively, “I know what I saw, Reddy. Let’s not talk any more about it.”
“Right-o!” said Reddy. But he did not mean to quit looking just yet.
By this time they had reached the Captain’s cove, and Dick set Anne ashore, promising to call for her again in about an hour.
Anne started up the path with her white package under her arm, and met Nelly coming down.
“Hello!” said Nelly in surprise, for Anne had been over only the day before to visit the rabbit. “All alone?”
“Yes,” said Anne. “Dick brought me. I wanted to see you by yourself. It’s a secret. You see, the Club is going to have a dress-up party for Tante’s birthday, day after to-morrow. And of course you are to come.”
“Of course,” agreed Nelly, simply.
“And you will have to wear a fancy costume. Everybody will.”
“But I never can get ready so soon. I haven’t any dress,” protested Nelly.
“That’s what I thought,” said Anne eagerly,with the tactlessness she had yet to unlearn. It made Nelly flush. But Anne went on with the best will in the world. “So I came to bring you something that I think will do nicely, and will look lovely on you. I hope you will wear it. It will save a lot of trouble.” She held out the package to Nelly.
Nelly looked eager but doubtful. “Come up to the house and let Mother look, too,” she said, and the two girls scampered up the path.
“Mother! Anne has brought me a dress,” said Nelly Sackett, explaining to Aunt Polly in a few words. “Come right up to my room,” she invited Anne, leading the way up the narrow stairway to the second story.
Nelly’s room was small. Anne thought she had never been in so small a bedroom; unless you dignify a tent with that name. But Nelly’s room was clean as a whistle, with quaint old-fashioned furniture and braided rugs, and an ancient hand-woven bedquilt that Mrs. Poole would have coveted. Out of the east window Nelly had the prettiest view of the sea; while from the other corner she looked right into the branches of an oldapple tree, gnarled and twisted by its hard life in the bleak Cove, during northern winters.
“You can lay it on my bed,” said Nelly, smoothing the blue and white quilt. Aunt Polly had followed more slowly up the steep flight, and now stood watching, hands on hips, while Anne unfolded the sheets of tissue and shook out the ruffles of white tarlatan. Anne handled the pretty Columbine dress as if she loved it.
“Oh, how lovely!” cried Nelly, gently touching the spangled sparkling bodice, the satin slippers and the tinsel wand. Anne held up the crown of flowers and looked at it with her head on one side.
“It is pretty, isn’t it?” she said. “I danced in it at a fancy-dress party last winter. But that was indoors. It will look even lovelier out of doors, in the moon-light, under the trees! This crown will be nice on your curly hair.”
“I never saw anything so sweet!” exclaimed Nelly. “But it might get hurt.”
“You and I are about the same size,” Anne went on, not noticing the objection. “I’m sureyou can wear the slippers and everything. Won’t you try them on?”
“But what are you going to wear?” asked Nelly. “Yes,” added Aunt Polly, “what about you, Anne?”
“Oh, I have something,” said Anne carelessly. “There’s another dress I wore in a play, at school—a nun’s dress; that will do very nicely.” She could not help thinking how ugly the nun’s costume really was. Nelly had been thinking too.
“I don’t believe it is half as pretty as this,” she said. “I can’t wear your things, when you ought to wear them yourself. Besides, I never had on a dress like this in my life, and I’d feel funny wearing it out of doors.”
“She would so,” agreed Aunt Polly wagging her head. “But it was kind of you to think of it, Anne.”
“It isn’t kind,” protested Anne. “Please take the dress, Nelly. I’d like to give it to you. I have lots of dresses at home.”
Nelly hesitated, fingering the tarlatan folds. “No,” she said slowly, “I’d rather not, thank you. It wouldn’t be nice. I’ll fix somethingelse. I guess I can think of something easy.”
“But what? What can you be?” Anne was really disappointed, and showed it like a spoiled child who isn’t having her own way.
“I’ll be—I’ll be—a mermaid!” said Nelly suddenly. “That’s easy! Nancy said once that I’d make a fine mermaid, with my hair loose, and my green bathing-suit, and some shells.”
“Then I shall be a mermaid, too!” declared Anne. “My bathing suit is red; but we can get kelp and things and drape both. My hair isn’t pretty and long like yours, but I can make some with seaweed. Mermaids can’t dance, but we willswim. Let’s go as mermaids together. Shall we, Nelly?” Aunt Polly looked as pleased as Punch.
“All right, let’s!” Nelly agreed with shy enthusiasm. “That will be fun! But who will wear this lovely dress?” she touched it again with a soft finger.
“Oh, I don’t know—Gilda, perhaps,” said Anne carelessly. She did not know that Gilda was already provided for. “Let’s go down to the beach and get some shells and things now before Dick comes back for me.”
The two girls ran off, chatting and laughing. And Aunt Polly standing in the doorway watched them with kind eyes. In a moment Anne darted back with a question. “Aunt Polly,” she said, “if I come over some morning very soon, will you show me how to make biscuits like those you gave me yesterday? I have got to take my turn at getting supper before long. And I’d like to surprise the Round Robin. They don’t think I can do anything—and I can’t!” she confessed. “But I think I can learn, if Norma and Beverly can.”
“Sure you can!” said Aunt Polly. “An American girl ought to be able to do ’most anything. Come right over Friday morning and I’ll give you a lesson while I’m baking.” Anne thanked her and ran off to join Nelly.
“Who’s that down on the beach with Nelly?” asked Cap’n Sackett coming up to the house from the opposite direction. Aunt Polly told him of Anne’s errand. “Sho!” said the Captain. “She’s got a good heart, that little girl, hasn’t she, Polly? Mermaids is it, they’re going to be? Lemme see; I guess I’vegot some truck they might like.” And after rummaging in the drawers of an old bureau Cap’n Sackett joined the girls on the beach with his arms full of an odd collection.
“Mermaids ahoy!” he shouted. “Here’s some loot for ye. Want some coral beads? I got ’em in the South Sea when I was a lad. And here’s some strings of shells. Kinder pretty, ain’t they? Want these things to dress up with, eh?”
“Oh yes! How pretty they are!”
“We can make nets for our hair,” said Nelly. “And look. Uncle, here are some lovely long devil’s aprons we have found to make us fringy tails.”
“You will give us some pieces of net to drape over our shoulders, won’t you, Cap’n?” begged Anne. “We shall be so trimmed-up and beautiful that the old bathing suits will hardly show.”
“Oh Anne! What fun it will be!” said Nelly. “I’m glad we are going to dress alike.”
“I’m glad too,” said Anne. “It’s lots more fun to make your own costume for a partythan to wear one that is all ready for you, isn’t it?”
“Here comes Dick,” said the Captain. “Don’t leave your bundle, Anne.” Anne picked up the tissue package which she had left lying on the beach and had almost forgotten.
“Don’t forget to come over early, and plan to spend the night,” she said to Nelly. “We will dress in the bath house. Good-bye, Nelly!”
“Good-bye, Anne!” the girls waved and smiled until the canoe was out of the Cove.