CHAPTER XIITHE STREET MASQUERADE
Itwas the evening before Admission Day. Silver Gate City wore its gala dress in honor of the approaching 9th of September, the anniversary of the birth of the State of California.
Arches draped with flags spanned the street corners; streamers of red, orange, and green floated from trolley and telegraph wires; palm-branches and festoons of bunting decked the fronts of houses and shops. To-morrow the city was to be serious and grand with orations and bands of music, but to-night it was on tiptoe for a frolic.
Directly after tea Molly and Pauline retired to Molly’s room to prepare for the street masquerade.Kirke and Paul were arraying themselves in Paul’s room across the way, roaring and clapping at intervals with such gusto that Captain Bradstreet, in the library beneath, chuckled from sympathy.
The captain was to pose at the festival as General Washington, and had already donned a long military coat, black stockings, and knee-breeches of velvet.
“Unless our ears deceive us, Patsy, those young people are in pretty fair spirits,” he said, with a courtly bow to Mrs. Davidson, who stood at his elbow dressed like Martha Washington.
She wore an old-fashioned brocade gown, with her powdered hair rolled back from her forehead over a cushion.
“The same thought has occurred to myself, General,” she replied archly, as she arranged the white ruffles at his wrists. “They are bent on mystifying their sisters to-night,and are highly pleased with the costumes selected.”
“That is evident, madam. Are you the only one in the secret?”
“The only one besides Mrs. Rowe. The boys want to mingle in the crowd before giving you an opportunity to recognize them. Shall we go on?”
The false father of his country bowed assent, and reached for his three-cornered hat.
“Since it is your will, madam, we will depart forthwith.”
The Revolutionary pair had secured reserved seats in a sun parlor overlooking the plaza, and Mr. and Mrs. Rowe occupied chairs near them. Mrs. Rowe wore a black silk dress, and had thrown over her head a lace mantilla. Mr. Rowe sported a Spanish hat and cloak.
“Papa plays he’s a Spanish man, Auntie David, so he won’t get cold,” explained pink-robed Weezy.
Little Miss Weezy had known Mrs. Davidson and Captain Bradstreet at first sight, because Pauline had described the garments in which they would appear.
“Your papa is a very sensible man, little queen of the fairies,” returned the make-believe Lady Washington; and she stooped to bend in shape the wire taste in Weezy’s drooping left wing.
“Now I’m going to see if I can tell Kirke and Mollie in their play clothes,” said her dainty majesty, with a touch of her wand on General Washington’s shoulder.
The general smiled upon her as she flitted away like a roseate cloud.
Through her pink silk mask, she observed many wonders in the street outside, and presently, she danced back to her mother, crying,—
“Look, look, mamma! There are Pauline and Mollie! White dresses on; sunbonnets too.”
The masked faces beneath the white sunbonnets turned in the direction of Weezy’s voice, but the white figures moved forward without halting.
“They’re justa-funning, mamma. ItwasPauline and Molly, now truly.”
“It seems to me that the taller one is too tall for my Pauline, and the shorter one is too short for your Molly, señora,” said General George Washington Bradstreet, following with his eye the simply arrayed couple.
Turning neither to the right nor to the left, they walked on, arm-in-arm, under the brilliant arc light, while the fairy queen’s mamma smiled behind her black mask. Of all in the sun parlor, she and Lady Washington alone knew how Pauline and Molly were to be dressed.
Weezy grew impatient.
“Say, mamma, please. Wasn’t it Pauline and Molly?”
“I mustn’t tell you, little queeny.”
“Oh, dear! I hate that ugly thing over your face, mamma. You don’t look like my pretty mamma. You look like some other little girl’s mamma.”
“Do I?” Mrs. Rowe laughed. “And you look to me, fairy queen, like some other mamma’s little girl.”
“I hope Kirke won’t guess I’m his onty donty sister, mamma. Where is Kirke, I’d like to know.”
The longer Weezy watched the comers and goers, the more bewildered she grew. Here stalked a tall man in a white sheet, his face muffled in a pillow-case; and next him Weezy spied a yellow pumpkin marching on two feet. At least it appeared to be a pumpkin, only Weezy had never before beheld any pumpkin that had a boy’s head in place of a stem.
“O mamma, see! There’s a little girl looks just like a tulip! And there’s a little boy—Omamma, mamma,dosee him! He’s all black and part yellow like a bigsting-ybumblebee!”
Weezy hopped up and down too excited to keep still.
“I expect any minute to see her fly into the air on those gauze wings of hers,” remarked General Washington. And of course he meant what he said, for George Washington never told a lie.
“Don’t be uneasy about her, General,” responded the pretended Spanish lady playfully. “She won’t flutter far from the earth while these strange sights are to be witnessed.”
To and fro past the sun parlor trooped monks with cowls, and nuns with rosaries; men dressed in gunny-sacks, and women dressed in newspapers. All wore masks. Weezy saw pretty masks and hideous masks; masks of pigs’ faces, of pug-dogs’ faces, of negro, Chinese, and tattooed Indian faces. Inevery direction the square was a moving mass of varied color. To look through the window was like looking through a slowly whirling kaleidoscope.
“Now those white girls are coming back, mamma,” called Weezy. “And here’s an old, old woman with a queer hat on, and she’s got a dog.”
“That woman must be Old Mother Hubbard, Weezy.”
“And, O mamma! can you see? There’s somebody with a striped dress on. It’s red and white; blue too. It looks like Fourth of July.”
Her mamma preserved a discreet silence.
“And, oh, please, mamma, see that other somebody with her! Her clothes are all red and orange and green.”
The “somebodies” were Pauline and Molly, and they were laughing under their breath to hear Weezy talk about them in this high key.
“They’ll never guess me in this black wig, Pauline,” whispered Molly, taking long steps to disguise her gait.
“Nor me in this blond one, unless Paul does,” returned Pauline. “Isn’t it strange that we haven’t found him and Kirke yet?”
“Very. I’ve taken particular notice of all the clowns and Indians, Miss Stars-and-Stripes. They don’t any of them seem like our boys.”
“I’m wondering, Miss Gold-State, if Paul didn’t give me a glimpse of that comic mask on purpose to fool me.”
Here Old Mother Hubbard turned aside to join Mother Goose, and this brought United-States Pauline and California Molly next the two “white girls.”
“It would be just like him, Miss Stars-and-Stripes.”
“I don’t see any fun in dressing up in sunbonnets,” remarked Pauline of her neighbors in front. “It’s no disguise at all.”
“No,” returned Molly. “We can wear sunbonnets any day.”
The white maskers quickened their pace.
“Hush, Molly! I’m afraid those girls have overheard every word we’ve said,” said Pauline, pulling down her blue liberty cap. “See them shake. They’re laughing at us.”
“If they’re laughing we haven’t hurt their feelings, Pauline, so I don’t care.”
Had not Molly’s ears been partially covered by her wig she might have heard a faint titter from under the nearest sunbonnet.
“I think those must be country girls, Molly; don’t you? They kick out the hems of their gowns every step they take.”
“You ought to give them lessons in Delsarte, Pauline.”
Molly and Pauline had again come around to the enclosed balcony, where Weezy stood at an open window gazing out.
“The little fairy queen hasn’t the leastidea who we are,” whispered Pauline triumphantly; “nobody has but your mother. Take longer steps, Miss California, or your papa will know you by the way you walk.”
“And your papa’ll know you, Miss Liberty Cap, by the way you swing your arms.”
“No, he shan’t. I’ll hold them as stiff as Indian clubs.”
“That’s a dear; and I’ll march like a colonel. You needn’t be afraid of my giving us away, Polly.”
“Unless you spoil everything by giggling, Miss California. You’resucha girl to giggle!”
Pauline was giggling herself, but so softly that no one in the sun parlor was the wiser; no, not even Lady Washington, who sat only a few feet from the pavement.
“What makes them press back upon us so?” said Molly, suddenly stopped by the crowd in front. “Stretch your neck, Miss Stars-and-Stripes.”
That inquisitive little dog“That inquisitive little dog.”Page153
“That inquisitive little dog.”Page153
“That inquisitive little dog.”
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Pauline had the advantage of Molly in being the taller.
“Oh, oh, Mother Goose has lost her goose! No—yes—no—she’s caught it! What a scramble! Why, Molly, Mother Goose must be a boy! Who knows but it’s Paul?”
“Or Kirke, Pauline!”
People began to move on again. When the crush was over, the girls found themselves once more beside the white sunbonnets. The wearers of the bonnets bowed in a friendly fashion, and one of them—it was the shorter—handed Pauline a bunch of carnations.
Pauline murmured her thanks, and whispered to Molly that she thought she had met that girl before—perhaps at La Jolla.
How much longer the pleasant farce might have gone on but for Zip cannot be told, for at this point that inquisitive little dog appeared upon the scene to find out what Molly and Kirke were doing. Barking and whining, hefrisked about Molly, “saluting the flag” as Pauline said; and after that performance of what use was it for Molly to pretend that she wasnotMolly?
And as if he had not already done mischief enough, Zip next charged at the girl who had given Pauline the pinks, and the girl’s mask dropped down, and everybody saw that the supposed maiden was Kirke Rowe.
Weezy almost laughed her wings off at the sight, while General Washington and the “Spanish man” openly applauded.
“To think,” said the amused general, “that those children should have kept their secret the whole evening, and that after all it should have been the dog that let the cat out of the bag!”
But the cat was out, and thus ended the farce for our masqueraders.
The evening had been a delight, and we will leave the happy children laughing and complimentingone another on the extraordinary shrewdness they had displayed in disguising themselves. We may meet them again in a year and a day; who knows where? Possibly in the City of the Silver Gate, possibly in Europe. But wherever it may be, The Merry Five will not appear again with masks on their faces.