So he pulled up his cowl, the ballad went on to state—and Louise went on to act—and trotted off to tell the news to Robber Brown.
They came on together, while the Father repeated the news, and stood consulting in the corner, while Alice, from her actions, seemed to be thinking still of the sorter.
Robber Brown took it quite calmly. He decided to be quite kind to Alice about it—merely to
Nab that gay young sorter, terrify him into fits,And get his wife to chop him into little bits.
He argued that Alice, after that, would not love him any more. So, while Father Paul exited, Robber Brown lay stealthily in wait, assisted by his wife. Presently along came the gay young sorter again, waving his hand jauntily to Alice. Robber Brown sprang out, crossed directly in front of the sorter, who appeared not to see him at all, and proceeded to track him up and down the stage two or three times, with Mrs. Brown trailing in the rear. After the three had gone up and down twice (Alice, also, oblivious to her parents’ presence, and throwing kisses to the sorter) Robber Brown finally “took a life-preserver” in the shape of a stout-looking stick, and pretended to fell the gay young sorter. Immediately Mrs. Brown bounded up with a piece of chalk, and proceeded to mark him off in pieces for dissection, for, as Robber Brown remarked:
I have studied human nature and I know a thing or two—Though a girl may fondly love a living chap, as many do,Yet a feeling of disgust upon her senses there will fallWhen she looks upon her lover chopped particularly small!
Indeed, this terrifying sight as far as it went, seemed to have the desired effect on Alice. To be sure, she fell in a dead faint, and Father Paul had to catch her, while Mr. and Mrs. Brown, and two more bandits (in bandannas) carried off the late sorter; but immediately afterward a young bandit, very much like Robber Brown except that he was smaller, came in and was patted with obvious admiration by Mr. and Mrs. Brown, who led him up to Alice. She recovered slowly, sat up, and presently accepted his attentions with pleasure. Father Paul gave them his blessing, while Marie said:
And gentle little Alice grew more settled in her mind,She never more was guilty of a weakness of that kind,Until at length good Robber Brown bestowed her little handOn a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band!
After that the curtain was drawn again, while the girls dressed for Holmes’s “It Was a Gay Young Oysterman.” This, while it was good, was not the hit with the audience that “Gentle Alice Brown” had been. When it was finished, and the oysterman and his bride were seen “keeping a shop for mermaids down below,” the girls took down the curtain, and while more music was played the performers hurried into their pretty dresses. Then they came out, and strolled about the camp with the audience.
“Where are Vicky and Sandy?” Winona remembered to askHelen, as they met after the curtain was down. “Did they come?”
“I think so,” said Helen, rubbing hard at her cork mustache. “Adelaide, did you see Sandy anywhere?”
Adelaide, who was just braiding her hair, turned.
“Yes, I did,” she said. “She’s here somewhere, with another little girl. I saw them not long ago.”
Winona went in search of them, for when you ask a guest to an entertainment it’s only polite to hunt her up. It was not hard to find the sisters. They were sitting with Louise, eating home-made ice-cream.
Winona sat down by them.
“I’m awfully glad you came, Vicky.”
“So’m I, too,” said Vicky. She seemed rather shy here in the camp, but she looked happy. “I’m having a nice time.”
“I’m glad,” said Winona. “Did you like the moving pictures?”
“Yes,” said Vicky, “they were awfully funny. And—oh, Winona, I’ve picked out a name.”
“What is it?” asked Winona.
“Janet. Of course people can call me Vicky still, if they want to, but my real name will be Janet. I asked uncle, the way you said, and he said I did have a middle name, Janet, after my grandmother.”
“Oh, that’s splendid!” said Winona. “I’m named after my grandmother, too.”
“That makes us a sort of relation, doesn’t it?” asked Vicky.
“Why, I hope it does,” was the hearty reply.
“And there’s something I wanted to ask you about,” said Vicky—now Janet—shyly. “Alone, I mean.”
“Come over here with me, and we’ll walk up and down and talk about it,” invited Winona.
Vicky took her hand, and they strolled off down one of the wood-paths.
“I’d rather not ask Louise,” explained Vicky, “because—well, she laughs so about everything. She might laugh at me. And that other girl is sort of grown-up talking. But—well, it’s—I’d like to be like the rest of the people—other little girls, you know—and it’s dreadfully hard when you haven’t any father or mother, and your uncle’s an artist with a temp’rament. Sometimes he gets us governesses, and they say we’re queer, and sometimes we just do as we please. But—well, there isn’t anybody to show us things.”
She looked at Winona wistfully, as if she thought she could show her how to be just like other children all at once.
“Why do people always come to me to show them how?” wondered Winona to herself. “I don’t know any more about how to do things than the other girls.”
She did not realize that it was her sunniness and sympathy—her Ray-of-Lightness, as Louise called it—together with a certain straightforward common sense, that made girls who wanted help come to her. They could be sure that she would not laugh at them, or tell anyone else what they had said, and they were sure of advice that had brightness and sense.
“What sort of things do you want me to tell you?”asked Winona. “I’d love to help you, but some of the others know lots more about things than I do.”
“It’s you I want to ask,” said Vicky decidedly. “It’s my clothes, to begin with. Are they right?”
Winona stopped and looked Vicky over. They were out in the open by now, and it was bright moonlight, so she could see plainly what the little girl had on. It was a blue taffeta, very stiff and rustling, trimmed with plaid taffeta and black buttons. By its looks it had been bought ready-made, for it had a sort of gaudy smartness. It was of good material, but somehow, it was cheap-looking. Also by its looks, bread-and-butter had been eaten on or near it.
“You mean your dress?”
“Yes,” said Vicky. “It isn’t right, is it? But I don’t know what to do about it. I bought it myself.”
“You mean your uncle gives you the money, and you go and buy your own things?” asked Winona.
“Oh, yes,” said Vicky. “But the ones the governesses used to get weren’t much better. There was one governess who always picked out bright green. I hate green, anyway. And sometimes the cook used to. She would yet if I’d let her. But I won’t. I don’t think it’s any of her business.”
“Well——” Winona hesitated.
“Well, what had I better do?” demanded Vicky.
“I don’t know!” said Winona frankly. “But I do know that that silk dress is wrong. Why don’t you get summer dresses, chambrays and ginghams and organdies?”
“I don’t know,” said Vicky. “I never thought about it. Silk is better, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think so,” said Winona. “It doesn’t wash. You see this dress isn’t very clean.”
“No,” acknowledged Vicky. “Does being clean count such a lot?”
“Goodness!” Words failed Winona. “I tell you,” she said finally. “Why don’t you come over here and join the Blue Birds, Vicky? Marie could tell you a lot of things and it would be the quickest way to learn a lot about being like other people, if that is what you want.”
“I’d like to,” said Vicky, “but I sort of keep house.”
“I have an idea, then,” said Winona. Now, when Winona had ideas her friends usually waited to hear what she had to say. “Why couldn’t some of the girls come up and stay with you, after Camp is over? It will be quite awhile even then before school opens. We could help you—show you how to do things.”
“Oh, I’d like that,” said Vicky. Then she stopped, doubtfully. “That is, if I could pick out the ones.”
“Of course, you’d invite your own guests,” Winona assured her. “And we’d pay what we cost your uncle extra.... But what about him? It’s his house, and he mightn’t like it.”
“Oh, he’d never care,” said Vicky. “He never knows much about what goes on, anyway! And I know he’d like to have me learn how to be a well-bred little gentlewoman, because he talks about it sometimes. And anyway he’s going off somewhere where he can’t take us some time soon.”
“Then I don’t see why we can’t manage it!” said Winona enthusiastically. “But I can tell you now about the clothes. You want to buy dresses that will wash. And you don’t ever want to play in silk dresses, or even organdies or batistes—tree-climbing, and things like that, I mean.”
“I might get some middies, like you wear,” said Vicky thoughtfully. “And I suppose, long’s I’m going to reform, I might as well get Sand to keep her dresses on. She goes chasing out in her underwaist and petticoat sometimes.”
“Oh, that was why she hadn’t any on when Louise found her!” said Winona, seeing a light.
“Yes,” confessed Vicky. “What’s that noise?”
“That’s the horn,” said Winona. “It must mean that it’s bedtime. She’s playing ‘taps.’ Mrs. Bryan signals us with it, always.”
“I think I’d like to be a Blue Bird,” said Vicky. “But I like the other plan better,” she added quickly.
“We’re going to be here quite a while longer,” said Winona, “so you’ll have lots of time to think whether you want us and whether your uncle will be willing.”
“Oh, that’s all right!” said Vicky as the two went back to camp.
It was quite true that the Camp was not to break up for some time, owing to the Wampoag people’s appetite for Camp jellies and linens; but so far as Winona was concerned, life under the greenwood tree received a sudden check.
It was a harmless-looking letter enough that the detachment of Blue Birds brought up from the post-office. Winona pounced on it with a cry of joy. “Oh, a letter from mother!” she said. “And we only had one yesterday, Florence!” So she tore it open.
“Dear Little Daughter,” it said, in a rather shakier handwriting than was usual with Mrs. Merriam. “I am sorry to have to tell you, as you are having such a splendid time, that we need you here at home. Yesterday, just after I had mailed my last letter to you, I slipped on the wet cellar stairs, and went down from top to bottom, and the result is a badly wrenched ankle. The doctor says that it is a severe sprain. Clay is a good little soul, but he can’t do very much more than the helping out, and your father has to have his meals and everything. So I shall have to ask my little girl to come home and keep house for me. I will expect you the day after you get this. Your loving mother.”
“Oh!” cried Winona. “Oh, poor mother!”
“What’s the matter!” asked Florence.
“Mother’s sprained her ankle on the cellar stairs,” said Winona, “and I have to go home. You needn’t, Floss.”
“I shall, though,” said Florence—and the younger Miss Merriam was a very determined little person. Her eyes filled with tears. “Frances and Lucy and I had a secret hike all planned,” she said. “Oh, dear, it is so nice in camp! But I won’t let you go home and nurse mother all alone, and you needn’t think it!”
Winona didn’t argue. She gave the letter to her little sister to read, and went off in the woods to be by herself. She climbed up to the platform that two of the girls had built, and sat there. There was no use denying it, she did not want to go home. She was going, of course, and going to nurse her mother just as well as she possibly could, and look after her father with all the powers she had learned in the Camp Fire activities. And she was sorry her mother’s ankle hurt her—very, very sorry. But—oh, dear! There was a beautiful new dance that Edith, who went into Wampoag and got lessons, which she passed promptly on, had been going to teach her. There was a new kind of cooking she had been going to teach a group of Blue Birds. There was a new dive—well, there were any amount of things, that if anyone had asked her about, she would have said she simplycouldn’tbreak off. But she had to. And cooking at home in August was very different from doing it in the woods with a lot of other girls—and everyone she knew well was going to stay here—
Winona sat up and mopped her eyes.
“This isn’t the way to follow the law of the Fire!” she reminded herself. “I can glorify work just aswell home as here—better, in fact, for it’s pretty certain there’ll be more work to do!” She laughed a little.
“Coming up, Winona!” called Helen from below.
“Come on!” called back Winona.
“What’s the matter?” inquired Helen when she gained the platform. “You’ve been crying.”
“I’ve got to go home.” Winona gave the news briefly. “Mother’s sprained her ankle.”
“Oh, what a perfect shame!” said Helen.
“I know I’m taking it like a baby,” said Winona with a gulp, “instead of being noble and acting as if I liked going home. And of course I’m going. Only—only I do wish mother had picked out any time but this to sprain a perfectly good ankle!”
“Can’t she get somebody else to come take care of things?” asked Helen. “I don’t know how on earth we’ll get along without you, Win. You never say much, but somehow you’re the centre of things. We’ll miss you awfully!”
Winona blushed at the compliment, and reached down to pat Helen’s hand.
“You’re a dear, Helen, to think so. But you’ll all get along all right. It’s I that will have most of the missing to do. No, there’s nobody mother could get. Aunt Jenny’s off in the White Mountains, getting well from something herself. And all we have at home is Clay—the little colored boy mother got at the Children’s Aid. From what Tom said he’s a regular Topsy. No, I have to go home. Oh, think of it, Helen! Hot housekeeping all August and half September, with everysingle girl I know well up here, canoeing and swimming and folk-dancing and all sorts of splendid things! You’ll all have beads down to your feet.”
This time it was Helen who patted Winona.
Presently Winona mopped her eyes again and threw back her shoulders.
“Come along, Helen; I’ve had my little weep out. Now I’m going to tell Mrs. Bryan about it, and trot off home looking pleased to death at the prospect.”
They swung themselves down from the tree-house, and started back to camp at a slow run. There was a good deal to do. There was everything of Winona’s to pack, and Florence’s, too, if she was really going, and she insisted that she was.
“I won’t be a bit of trouble,” she said, “and I’ll be a real help. You’ll see!”
So they packed everything, and said good-bye to everybody, and were paddled up the lake to Wampoag, where they were to take the train for home. They had to stop over at the Scouts’ camp and break the news to Tom. But Winona invited him fervently to stay where he was. She knew that with the best will in the world to be useful a boy makes more work than he does, and has to be cooked for to quite an extent. Tom said he would be down the next day to see his mother, but he would go back again.
“Good-bye, dears,” said Mrs. Bryan, who was seeing them off, when she parted from Florence and Winona at the dock, “I know you’ll be happy. Remember we’ll miss you all the time, Ray-of-Light. AndI don’t know what I’ll do without Florence to run errands for me. Come back as soon as your mother can spare you.”
“We will,” said Winona. “Only it feels like the poetry—don’t you remember?
“Remember what I tell you, says the old man to his son—Be good and you’ll be happy—but you won’t have any fun!”
“Just the same,” said the Guardian, “being what you are, Winona, I’d venture to promise you that in the long run you will get more happiness out of being happy than out of having fun.”
Winona laughed as she kissed her good-bye.
“I’m going to plan ways for glorifying work and being happy all the way down on the train,” she said, “but I haven’t any—well—thoroughly planned—yet!”
It was nearly nightfall when Winona reached home, for she had not started till a late afternoon train. She found her mother established in the living-room, where a door opening on the hall gave her a good view of the kitchen, and Clay in it. She looked well, but tired, and her foot was bandaged and on a pillow.
“You’re sure you didn’t mind coming home, dear?” was the first thing her mother said. “It was a shame you had to!”
Winona had to reassure her mother so fervently about her being willing to come back, and even liking to, that she began to find she really did! It was pleasant there, after all. The garden was full of blooming flowers, and it was a cool, pleasant day.
“What shall I do first, mother?” she asked, as she and Florence sat each with one of their mother’s hands, and tried to tell her all about everything at once.
“The first thing for you to do,” said Mrs. Merriam, “is to get baths and put on cool dresses, both of you, and come down to dinner. Your father and Clay are getting it. You aren’t to do a thing till to-morrow, dear. You must be tired with your trip.”
“I don’t think anything could tire me!” said Winona blithely. And she and Florence, as each of them in turn took baths in the one thing a camp doesn’t possess—a bathtub—felt that it was good to be home and have mother pet you, after all!
“It certainly is good to have you back, children,” said their father, as he sat with a daughter on each side of him after dinner. They had their mother out on the back porch with them. It was nearly as large as the front one, and she could be moved, couch and all, through a front window with very little trouble. “Now I can have an afternoon off from housekeeping. But I’ve done well, haven’t I, Mary?”
“You certainly have,” said Mrs. Merriam, “and it’s been hard for you, too. But now that I have my Camp Fire Girls back nobody’s going to need to do one thing.”
“Not a thing!” said Florence. “We’ve learned ever so many things, mother. We’re going to house-keep better’n you ever did!”
The family shouted. It was so like Florence.
“I don’t think quite that,” said Winona modestly.“But we’re going to have a lovely time running things, anyway!”
So next morning the “lovely time” began.
It seemed queer to waken on a mattress instead of on a pine bed; still stranger to hear the alarm-clock go off. Winona did not like alarm-clocks, and she threw a pillow at it before she stopped to think. But she got up as it told her, for all that, and was downstairs in twenty minutes. She had put on a blue ripplette work-dress, fresh and pretty. It was pleasant to have on a pretty frock instead of the camp uniform.
“There are lots of nice things!” she said to herself sturdily. “I’m going to enjoy myself every minute, if I have to tie a string to my finger to remind me!”
She found Clay, whose acquaintance she had made the night before, already down. The cereal was in the double boiler and the coffee in the percolator, already.
“Hit ain’ much to do fo’ breakfast,” said he encouragingly. “Ah do it maself, mos’ly.” And indeed he proved so expert that all Winona found left her to do was gathering the flowers for the table, and cutting the oranges. Breakfast had more frills than usual, though—Winona had come home prepared for work, and she found some to do. The oranges were loosened back from their skins like grape-fruit, there were finger-bowls with flower-petals floating on top, the cereal dishes had little plates underneath, and even the hot corn-bread, which Winona, by the way, discovered Clay did not know how to make, was stacked in a highly artistic log-cabin pattern. Winona, with a little whiteapron over her fresh blue dress, sat and poured the coffee importantly. Her father smiled with pleasure, as she sat opposite him, flushed and pretty and dainty.
“Well!” he said. “This is certainly a fine beginning, Winnie! Did you learn all this in the woods?”
Winona colored with pleasure.
“No, I think I knew most of it before I went,” she said. “That is, all but the corn-bread—that was an experiment.”
“And see!” said Florence. “Flowers in the finger-bowls!”
“But you mustn’t work too hard, little daughter,” said her father, as he went into the living-room to bid his wife good-bye before he went to business.
Winona followed him closely with her mother’s tray. Mrs. Merriam was dressed, and Mr. Merriam had helped her downstairs and to her couch. It had been rather fun to arrange the tray with doilies and the daintiest china. She carried it in as her father came out.
“Good-morning, mother!” she said gayly. “Things are going beautifully, and housekeeping’s fun!”
“That’s my brave little girl!” said her mother. “But I must warn you, Ray-of-Light, that you’ll get over-tired if you try to put on too many trimmings. The trouble with housekeeping is, you never get a vacation. It keeps on all day long. Simplify all you can.”
Winona laughed. “I refuse to start on your tray!” said she.
She made her mother as comfortable as she could, then went back to the kitchen.
“Now, Clay,” she said, “Mrs. Merriam’s sent for me to come home to run things. You and I are going to get as much fun out of the work as we can, and do it just as well and as fast as we know how. Aren’t we?”
“Yas’m,” said Clay doubtfully. “But dey ain’ no fun to be got outen washin’ dishes,” he added with conviction.
Winona looked thoughtful.
“No, I suppose there isn’t,” she admitted. “But there ought to be. Up at the Camp we got credit for what we did, if it was done right. I wonder——”
“You mean dem credits what folks buys groceries with?” interrupted Clay.
“No,” said Winona. “But—I’ll tell you, Clay, I have a plan! I’ll put a chart up here on the kitchen wall. Every time you get the dishes washed and put away in half an hour, without breaking them, three times a day for a week, you get credit—for fifteen cents. What do you think of that?”
“Ah like it!” said Clay. “But Ah rather have de two cents a day.”
“All right,” promised Winona rashly. “Now go ahead with the dishes while I put fresh paper on the shelves.”
“Don’t take it too hard, dear,” Mrs. Merriam warned her once more, when Winona ran in, breathless from vigorous bedmaking, to report progress. “What are you going to do now?”
“Now? Nothing till lunch time. I’m so glad we have dinner at night. It’ll be lots easier to get thehardest meal when it’s cooler, and there’s been a rest between.”
“You dear child!” said her mother, reaching out her hand to Winona where she sat by the sofa. “You’re bound to look on the bright side.”
“I’m bound to glorify work and be happy,” said Winona gayly. “Now, mother, I’d like some money. I’d rather not start with a regular housekeeping allowance till Monday. But right now I want a dish-mop, and a soap-maker, and some new white oil-cloth for the kitchen dresser. Can I have all that?”
“Certainly,” said her mother. “Keep the kitchen as spic and span as you can. The fresher the surroundings, the easier it is to work.”
So after luncheon, which wasn’t much trouble because there was no man to cook for, Winona and Florence went shopping, leaving Clay singing “Ma Honey Man” cheerfully over his dishes. The money their mother had given them bought not only the things Winona went after, but pink and blue chambray for aprons for herself and Florence, and red for Clay.
“The pretty aprons will make it more fun to be in the kitchen—don’t you think so, Florence?” asked Winona.
Florence, naturally, thought so, too, and they bought them and made them up before the day was over. Florence asked of her own accord for definite things to do. And an idea came to Winona—that they start a system of home honor-beads.
“Of course they won’t really count,” she explainedto her little sister, “but they’ll always be there to remind us of our work.”
“That will be lovely!” said Florence, “but what will they be like?”
“Wait and see,” said Winona.
That day was all used up making the new long aprons and the mob-caps to match, dainty and Kate-Greenaway looking. But the next morning after the beds were done they went to sit with their mother. She said they could make the beads there with her. Winona ran out into the garden and brought back a handful of flowers that she put in water, and set beside her mother’s couch.
“How do you feel, mother?” she asked.
“It doesn’t hurt badly at all,” said her mother cheerfully.
Winona carried out the tray, and moved about, straightening her mother’s room a little more before she sat down to her work.
“You’re sure we’re not in your way, mother?” she asked.
“Indeed you aren’t!” said her mother. “You don’t know how lonely I’ve been with all my children gone. And do let in all the air and sunshine you can, dear. It may be hot later, so that we’ll have to shut out the light a part of the day.”
“All right,” said Winona, doing it. Then she called to Florence.
“Florence, will you get the oil-paints that we usefor stencilling?” she asked. “I can borrow them, mother, can’t I?”
Mrs. Merriam was perfectly willing, and while Florence was getting the tubes of paints, and the brushes, Winona brought out a jar of ordinary kidney-beans from the kitchen. She spread newspapers on the floor and on the table, and when Florence came back with the paint she set to work.
“Just beans!” said Florence scornfully. “You can’t make beads out ofthem!”
“Can’t I?” said Winona, “Well, if you don’t like them when they’re done, I’ll buy you a string of any kind of colored ones that you want.”
“Thank you,” said Florence, settling down to watch her sister.
The first thing Winona did was to pierce each of the beans lengthwise with a steel knitting-needle, which she heated in the alcohol lamp’s flame. This was the longest part of the work. Next she strung them all on a long piece of cord. Then while Florence held one end of the cord and she the other, Winona dashed each bead in turn with touches of color, one after another—rose, blue, green and violet. She finished them with little flecks of gold paint, and fastened one end to the chandelier, where the beads could swing free and dry soon. The girls got luncheon while the beads were drying.
After luncheon was eaten and cleared away the girls went to work on their beads again. Florence held the string while Winona went over them with shellac.
“I think we’d better put them outdoors this time,”she decided. “The smell of the shellac may worry mother.”
So they swung the beads from the hammock rope.
“Do you think you will want to wear them?” she asked Florence, as she came back and began to clear away the paint-spotted newspapers.
“I should just think I would!” said Florence enthusiastically. “Why, they look just like the ones in the Wampoag stores, only lots prettier.”
“Who told you how to make them, Winnie?” asked her mother. “They are certainly lovely.”
“Nobody,” said Winona. “I saw some like them, and thought I could do it—that’s all.”
“I think you ought to get a real honor-bead for that,” said Florence. “I’m going to put down everything you do that I think might get honors for you.”
“I’ll keep track, too,” said Mrs. Merriam. “That’s a good idea, Florence. Then perhaps Winona’s having to leave the Camp won’t be such a setback. Give me a pencil, dear, and that little black notebook by it.”
They wrote down the making of the beads.
“We must keep watch, you and I, Florence,” Mrs. Merriam said.
Winona looked radiant.
“I’m going to write to Camp now, mother,” she said, “and I’ll ask Mrs. Bryan about counting things like this. It would be lovely if I got on as fast here as there—but I don’t believe it’s possible.”
“Wait and see,” said Mrs. Merriam.
Of course, things didn’t always go smoothly, even with Winona’s young energy and good-will hard at work. “Accidents will happen in the best regulated families” was a proverb whose meaning Winona learned thoroughly before she was through. There was, for instance, a tragic Saturday when she made ice-cream with most of the ice in the ice-box, and forgot to telephone for more. A sizzlingly hot Sunday dawned, with no ice to be had. So the Sunday chicken and lettuce were badly spoiled, not to mention various tempers. Winona, tired, hot, and with a consciousness of guilt, spent most of Sunday afternoon in the kitchen trying crossly to invent a Sunday night supper which did not need milk, eggs or salad. The day ended with a found-at-the-last-minute meal of potted tongue and canned peaches, and a general forgiveness all round, but it was a long time after that before Winona forgot it; indeed, she was known to get out of bed to take final peeps at the ice-chest and make sure it was filled.
Nevertheless, and in spite of all the mishaps that are bound to worry housekeepers, a light heart, a strong body and the fixed intention to make the best of things carried Winona triumphantly past her worries. Presently she found that things were settling into a regular routine, and that housekeeping was more interesting than hard. Best of all, she found she had a great deal of time to herself.
Then Tom came home. The Scouts had had to break up earlier than they expected, for two or three reasons. One was that Mr. Gedney had to get back to his business, another was that several of the boys worked, and had to get back, too. So Tom descended on his family, and Billy appeared next door. And things began to happen.
Tom tried faithfully not to be any trouble, and succeeded pretty well. And Mrs. Merriam’s ankle got better, slowly, as bad sprains do. Presently she was well enough to be taken in a wheel chair to see her friends. She usually went to spend the day.
One day everything seemed particularly calm and serene. Tom had wheeled the mother to the other end of town, early in the morning, and she was going to be taken for a long automobile ride by one of her friends. Tom had taken a pocketful of sandwiches, and gone off for a fishing-trip. So Winona built a mound of more sandwiches for herself and Florence, and prepared to take a day off.
She was curled up on the front porch in a hammock, reading, when the first thing occurred.
“Does Miss Winona Merriam live here?” inquired a familiar voice; and Winona, looking up, saw Louise, dusty and beaming.
“Oh, Louise, you angel! How lovely it is to see you!” she said, jumping up and hugging her friend.
“Yes, isn’t it?” said Louise, hugging back. “I came down on the train, and I’m here to spend the day, if you want me.”
“Want you! I should think I did!” said Winona. “Come in and get cool.”
“I’m not hot,” said Louise, “but Iwouldlike a drink of water.”
They were in the kitchen, fussing about pleasurably together, when they heard steps clattering up the porch.
“It’s the ice-man,” said Winona. “I must pay him.”
She ran upstairs, and Louise went on helping herself to sandwiches. She had eaten three, and was considering whether she really wanted anything more till lunch-time, when a large, fishy hand dropped over her shoulder and took a handful of ham-and-lettuce ones.
“Tom Merriam! There won’t be enough for lunch if we both eat them! I thought you’d gone off fishing for the day.”
“So did I,” said Tom leisurely, “but I found I hadn’t. Where did you blow in from?”
“Camp,” she said. “Winona’s upstairs hunting for change. She thought you walked like the ice-man.”
“Poor Win! She has that ice-man on her mind,” said Tom. “Nay, nay, little one. For far other reason am I here.”
He struck an attitude, with the sandwich he hadn’t finished waving over his head.
“Got hungry?” asked Louise prosaically.
“Not at all,” said Tom. “It was this way. As I was purchasing bait, I met my father.”
“Well—did he send you home?”
“Not exactly. Only—there’s a convention in town. A ministers’ convention. And father’s met two long-lostcollege chums, which—or who—are coming here to dinner to-night. One has a wife. Better tell Winona, and have Clay put on some extra plates. And—I forgot—here’s a fish I caught before I used up my bait and met father. Have him boiled or something for dinner with some of that stuff like mayonnaise dressing with green things in.”
“Your father?” asked Louise frivolously.
“No, the fish!”
Tom rushed upstairs to change his clothes, while Louise thoughtfully ate another sandwich and called Winona.
Winona came running down the back stairs.
“Did you keep him?” she said. “I couldn’t find where I’d put the change.”
“It wasn’t the ice-man,” said Louise, “it was Tom.”
“Tom?” asked Winona. “But he was gone for the day.”
“Anyway, he’s back. And—Winona Merriam, we’ll have to make more sandwiches for supper, or dinner or whatever it is. Two ministers and one wife are coming here to dinner to-night.”
Winona sprang to her feet and snapped her book shut.
“Sandwiches!” she said scornfully. “Don’t you know you have tofeedconvention people? Mother would die, and the Ladies’ Aid faint in a body, if we gave them sandwiches for dinner. No. They have to have a course dinner!”
“Where are you going to get it?” asked Louise meekly.
“Here!” said Winona. “I found one in a magazine the other day. Let’s see what we can do with it.”
Louise looked at Winona with respect. “Do you often rise to occasions this way?” she asked.
“This is the almost human intelligence that I have sometimes,” said Winona.
“Sure it’s intelligence?” asked Louise doubtfully.
Winona led the way upstairs toward her scrapbook without deigning to reply. Both girls bent eagerly over the course dinner she had pasted in on the last page.
“Shellfish, soup, fish, salad, roast, entrees, vegetables, dessert, black coffee, cheese, nuts and raisins,” she read. “These, in the order named, constitute a simple dinner.”
“I’d like to know who brought up the woman who wrote that,” commented Louise. “The Emperor of Russia, I should think.”
“Anyway, I am going to try to have it,” said Winona. “We can have oysters to begin with, because Tom always has some around for bait.”
“That kind mayn’t be good to eat,” objected Louise.
“Never mind. Perhaps these people won’t know the difference, just think they’re a brand-new kind.”
“You don’t open them till the very last thing, and then you serve them with ice on their heads to keep them cool, and lemon slices. I know that much,” said Louise, following Winona downstairs again.
“Then we won’t open them till the very last thing,and forget all about them till Tom comes downstairs again,” said Winona with decision. “Soup—let’s see. Oh, I know! Mother had me make some bouillon this morning, for old Mrs. Johnson down in Hallam’s Alley. We’ll serve that in the bouillon cups, and make Mrs. Johnson some more to-morrow, or take her chewing-tobacco instead. She’d much rather have it, she says.”
“All right. And Tom brought some fish in,” supplied Louise.
They went out to inspect the fish, and found that there would be plenty, if it was carefully distributed.
“Doesn’t everything dovetail beautifully?” said Winona thankfully. “What’s next?”
“Salad,” said Louise, consulting the scrapbook. “Haven’t you any lettuce in the garden?”
“Of course we have!” said Winona. “All there is to do is to pick it.”
“Well—the roast?”
But here there was a deadlock.
“There isn’t a thing in the house to roast,” said Winona, “and this time of year you have to telephone early to get things.” She moved to the telephone, and pulled herself back in dismay. “This is Wednesday!” she said. “And all the shops are closed Wednesday afternoon!”
“It isn’t afternoon, yet,” said Louise.
“Look at the clock,” said Winona.
And it was afternoon—one o’clock.
“Perhaps that’s a stray butcher,” said Louise, as they heard a long, loud knock at the kitchen door.
But it was only Billy Lee, who explained that he had tried every door but this in vain. He had a note to Winona from his sister. He perched himself on the stationary tubs while she read it, on the chance that she might want to write an answer.
“Come over and stay with me this afternoon,” it said. “I have a headache.”
“Oh, I can’t, Billy!” explained Winona, looking up from the note. “We have dinner to get for two ministers and their wife, and—Billy, you have a great deal of steady common sense. I heard father say so. What would you do if there wasn’t any meat, or any time to get any, or any place to get it?”
Billy tucked his foot under him, and looked serious, mechanically taking a sandwich as he thought. The girls were eating them, too, for it had been silently agreed that that would be all the lunch they would bother with.
“Why not try Puppums?” he suggested. “If they’re missionaries they’re used to roast dog. Every missionary has to learn to like it in the last year of his course.”
“Yes, or we might roast Clay,” said Louise scornfully. “Why don’t you suggest that? He isn’t any use, goodness knows, and they may have been missionaries to the cannibals!” She glanced at the small darky, who was sitting on the cellar door in happy idleness, singing fragments of popular songs to himself.
“You ought to make him useful,” said Billy. “Here, Clay, get up and help your young ladies.”
“Ahishelpin’ ’em,” said Clay with dignity; nevertheless he rose and came in for further orders.
“Down home,” continued Billy, “we always kill a chicken when we expect a minister.”
“But we haven’t so much as a papier-mache Easter chick,” objected Louise.
“The people next door but one have,” said Winona excitedly, starting up. “It’s against the law to keep chickens within the city limits, but they do it. But they’re away for the day.”
“They’re always getting into your garden and tempting poor old Puppums to chase them,” said Billy sympathetically.
Winona, acting on his suggestion, went to the door and looked out.
“Yes,” she said. “There’s one there now. There nearly always is.”
Louise lifted one eyebrow. “Well?” said she.
“Very well,” said Winona. “Come on, ladies and gentlemen. We are going to catch a next-door-but-one chicken, and pay the Janeways for him to-morrow.”
“When Puppums caught one last week,” said Florence, appearing suddenly, evidently in full possession of the conversation, “you tied it round his neck!”
She went down under the tubs to extract the wronged animal and sympathize with him on the injustice of life. But only Puppums heard her, for Billy and Winona, hindered by Clay, were careering wildly about after a vociferous, very agile fowl. It was finally captured with a crab-net, and led away to executionby Clay. It appeared that he, also, had had experience in chicken-killing for clergymen. He had often done it, he said, very artistically.
As he and the rooster passed on their way to the scaffold, Winona ran into the kitchen, and out again with a scream.
“It’s Henry!” she said wildly. “It’s Henry! We’ve caught the Janeways’s pet rooster! Clay! Clay!”
“Yas’m!” said Clay, appearing with Henry’s head in one hand and his body in the other. “Dis heah roosteh she certn’ly is good an’ daid! I c’n fix ’em!”
“And they loved him so!” said Winona tragically. “They were telling mother only yesterday how intellectual he was. ‘Not clever, merely,’ Mrs. Janeway said, ‘but really intellectual, my dear Mrs. Merriam!’”
Billy clutched the tubs in order to laugh better, and Louise sat down just where she was, on the floor.
“What’s the matter?” called Tom, running downstairs very clean and tidy.
“Winona’s murdered the Janeways’s intellectual rooster!” explained Billy; and lay back on the tubs again.
Tom, too, began to howl.
“What—Henry?” he said, when he could speak. “Oh, Winnie, youhavedone it! They’ve had him in the family since their grandfather’s time anyway. Well, you’d better make the best of it, and have Clay take out his interior decorations. Maybe we can eat him if you boil him long enough. I could have robbed theMartins’s tank of their tame goldfish if I’d known you wanted a dinner of household pets.” He sat down on the tubs by Billy and went off again.
“I suggested Puppums in the first place!” gurgled Billy.
“Never mind, Win,” said Louise, going over to Winona, who stood mournfully by the window, “I’ll attend to Henry. We’ll boil him first and then bake him, and he’ll be quite good. I’ll make the stuffing for him, too. I know how quite well.”
“Oh, thank you, Louise!” and Winona brightened up.
“Oh,” teased Billy, “then the remorse isn’t because he’s Henry, but because he’s tough?”
“It’s both,” said Winona, “but there’s no use being uselessly remorseful when you have work to do. I can feel ever so badly about it when I go to bed to-night. I often do. The fish is all right, anyway, and I’m going to make some sauce hollandaise for it out of the cookbook. Really all you need to know how to cook is a cookbook and intelligence.”
“I see the cookbook, but where——” began Tom.
“Billy Lee,” said Winona firmly, “if you came to see Tom, won’t you please take him out on the front porch and see him?”
“I didn’t!” said Billy coolly. “I came to bring Nataly’s note, and I’m staying to see you invent a ten-course dinner, if you’ll let me. Let me stay to dinner, Henry and all, and I’ll make your fish-sauce. All you need is a cookbook and intelligence——”
“Two clergymen,” counted Winona, “one wife, father, Louise, Tom, me—Florence is going out to supper, she said this morning. You’ll just make eight, Billy. Come and welcome, only please leave the fish-sauce alone.”
But Billy had already tied himself into a big pink apron, and was mixing butter and flour in a saucepan with every sign of knowing what he was about.
There was a brief, tense silence while the chicken, some white potatoes and onions, were put on to boil, sweet potatoes laid in the oven to be baked, and Clay sent into the garden for lettuce and radishes. They did not light any of the gas-stove burners except the one under the late Henry, because the afternoon was yet long. They went out on the porch and talked for a couple of hours. There was a general feeling that they mustn’t get too far away from the dinner.
About four Winona remembered to say to Tom, “Have you any bait-clams or oysters? We need them for our first course.”
“Bait!” said Tom. “Considering we’ve stolen the meat from the neighbors, and robbed the poor of the soup, and I caught the fish, we can afford to buy a few blue-points. I’ll go down and get them. Is there anything else you’d like while I’m down town?”
“Is it too late to order ice-cream?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “The ice-cream places won’t be open till five-thirty, and then only for an hour, you know.”
“The dairies are,” Winona remembered. “Pleasebuy some cream on your way back, and we’ll find a receipt and make it. There are nuts and raisins in the house. Crackers—cheese.... I think we’ll have enough for dinner.”
“I shouldn’t wonder!” said her brother thoughtfully, as he walked away to get his wheel.
The others went back to the kitchen, and Billy went on with his sauce hollandaise—that is, he took it out of the bowl of water where it had been cooling, and put it in the ice-chest.
“Why, it’s good!” said Winona, rather impolitely, having sampled it on its way.
“Of course it’s good!” said Billy serenely. “Didn’t I ever tell you about our old cook down south, and how I adored her? I used to tag round after her all the time when I was small—never would stay with my nurse—and I learned a lot of things. And seeing I’m going to be invited to this banquet, looks like I’d better make the ice-cream for you.”
“Oh, can you?”
“Watch me!” said Billy for all answer.
As a matter of fact, when Tom got back with the blue-points and the cream, he and Billy went to work together, and they compounded a pineapple ice-cream that was fit for the gods. Louise, meanwhile, stuffed the parboiled fowl and put him in to roast. The boys captured Clay, who had gone back to his cellar door and his songs, and set him to crushing ice. Winona sat down on the tubs where Billy had been, and gave herself up to deep thought. The entree had not yet been solved.
“Pancake batter?” she said aloud at last, in a mildly conversational tone.
“I’m sure of it,” said Billy, poking his head in from the back porch.
“If I take that pancake batter I got ready for to-morrow morning, sweeten it, and put butter and eggs and peaches in it, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be peach fritters. Anyway I can try ... then you drop them in the lard....”
She thought it over a little longer silently. Then she jumped down, and went into the cellar for the batter and the peaches, and brought them out on the back porch, near the ice-box, to experiment with. Tom had gone back to the pantry to see if there was cake enough, but Billy was still packing ice and salt around the ice-cream.
“Dear me!” said Winona, setting down her load on a low shelf. “I hate to see you doing all this. You’re company, you know, and here we’re letting you get a lot of the dinner. It worries me!”
“Don’t let it,” counselled Billy, tossing a lock of hair out of his eyes and going on with the packing. “I’m having a good time. To tell you the truth, I always have a good time over here. I rather feel as if I belonged to the family—and that’s a nice feel to have. You’re a good little chum, Winnie.... If you don’t let me pack all the freezers and things I want to I’ll just have to go back to merely being let in once in awhile, like company.”
“I feel as if you belonged to the family, too, Billy,”said Winona sincerely, “and if your packing freezers is any sign you do, go right on, please.”
“I am,” Billy assured her with his usual placidity.
“The lard’s hot, Win! Come see if they’ll frit!” called Louise from within; and Winona dashed off with her batter. But it was nice to have Billy feel that way about things. He was certainly the nicest boy she knew....
They began together, she and Louise, to drop the yellow batter into the fat, while Clay and the boys turned the freezer by turns. Louise and Winona had become so excited about their dinner by this time that a mere fritter-sauce was nothing. They made one, it seemed to them afterwards, looking back, without knowing how they did it, and it was very good at that.
“Oysters, soup, fish, salad,” muttered Winona for the twentieth time. “I believe everything’s ready but the cream, and that must be almost finished. Boys!” she called out through the back door, “will you please go and deck yourselves for the feast? Wear your tuxedos, please. We’re going to keep up the Merriam reputation for hospitality, or die in the attempt!”
“All right—just wait till we pack it,” Tom called back.
But she saw that they had separated in quest of their evening clothes before she left. Tom had just acquired his first set, and wasn’t particularly fond of them. But he put them on meekly, just the same.
“We’d better dress, too,” said Louise. “I’ll run over home and slip some things in a suitcase, and be right back again.”
Louise was as good as her word. She was back in a very few minutes, and in Winona’s room again. She found her friend standing in the middle of the floor, her dress exactly what it had been when she left.
“Better hurry,” warned Louise. “We haven’t overmuch time.”
“Hurry!” said Winona despairingly. “How can I? Do you know what I’ve done? I’ve hung away every single thin dress I own in the wardrobe, instead of putting them in the wash. I knew there was something I’d forgotten, and I couldn’t think what it was.”
“Oh, how dreadful!” said Louise. “You’ll have to put on something gorgeous, to match the boys’ clothes.”
“What can I do?” asked Winona sadly, and swung open the doors of her wardrobe. There, crumpled, forlorn, dejected, hung a line of dresses each hopelessly past wearing in its present state.
“Isn’t that a nice trick for a Camp Fire Girl?” inquired Winona scornfully. “It’s the kind of thing you’d lecture a Blue Bird kindly but firmly for doing, and make her see what a wreck she was going to make of her whole life if she kept on.”
“Never mind,” said Louise soothingly. “You’ve had so many other things to do, it’s no wonder you couldn’t remember that. Haven’t you anything but wash dresses? Where’s your yellow silk voile?”
“Ididremember that!” said Winona with a reluctantgrin. “I sent it to the cleaner’s day before yesterday. It won’t be done till Saturday.”
“What about your flowered dimity? Is all the freshness out of that? You don’t wear it often.”
“I sent for it from camp, for one of the girls to use in the Samantha tableaux, and the girl still has it, I suppose. She never gave it back. I forgot to ask for it, in the hurry of getting home. There’s no use trying to think. I’ve thought and thought, and everything else is too hot to wear, or soiled. There’s nothing for it but a shirtwaist and skirt.”
“Anything of mine would be up to your knees, and baggy,” said Louise thoughtfully. “Wait a minute, Win, till I think.”
“I’ll do my hair while you’re at it,” said Winona.
“Why couldn’t you borrow something of your mother’s?” was Louise’s next thought.
“Mother wears long dresses,” said Winona. “If she didn’t I could—I’m nearly her build.”
“Couldn’t you pin them up?”
“I declare, I believe I’ll try,” exclaimed Winona daringly. She ran out of the room, while Louise went on with her own dressing, and came back in a minute with a fresh, silk-lined black organdy over her arm.
“This is all there is for it,” she said. “Mother would be willing, I know, if she were here. She always wants me to wear her things.”
“It’s lovely,” said Louise admiringly, as Winona’s pink cheeks and blue eyes appeared above the soft black, “but I’m afraid we’ll hurt it if we put pins in it.”
“I won’t pin it up, then,” said Winona. “The guests will never know the difference. I don’t suppose father has mentioned my age.”
“You’ll look awfully old!”
“I don’t care! Have you any black hair-ribbons you could let me have, Louise? I see where I never get the honor bead for not borrowing, by the way!”
“You won’t lose it on account of my ribbons,” said Louise, “because I haven’t any. But I don’t believe hair-ribbons and your gown would match. Did you know you had a train?”
“No!” said Winona joyfully. She loved “dressing up,” and this was beginning to look very much like it. “I’ll do my hair up on top of my head, and nobody’ll think I’m younger than twenty!”
“Good!” said Louise, and helped. They wound the goldy-brown mass up on the very top, and completed the effect by hunting out a pair of plain glass eye-glasses, which Tom had brought from the ten-cent store once long ago.
“You look twenty-five anyway!” exclaimed Louise, and Winona fitted the glasses on her nose and assumed a severe expression to match. “Put your hair back off your forehead—that way.... That’s splendid!”
“I do look old!” said Winona, with a pleased expression. She trained up and down the room and looked at herself in the glass. “I’ll go down now.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” said Louise. “Don’t wait for me.”
When Winona sailed down in her disguise to put thefinishing touches to the table she found that Tom was already dressed, and was standing meekly at the head of the board. And also he had found time to decorate it.
“How do you like it?” he asked in a tone even meeker than his attitude.
Winona looked, pulled off her glasses in order to see better, looked again—and dropped down in a hopeless heap in the opposite chair. She did not say anything—the situation was beyond words.
“Don’t you like it?” said Tom again sweetly.
“Like it!” said Winona, beginning to giggle.
Four half-barrel hoops had been wreathed in smilax, and arched across the table at regular intervals, one at each end and one between each two places. In the middle of the table, completely hiding the olives, lay a half-opened gridiron, also wound with smilax. It was all very neatly done, for Tom was very neat-handed; but the general effect was rather startling.
“It—why, it looks like somebody’s grave!” said Winona protestingly.
Her tone was so stern that Puppums rose from beneath the table and tried nervously to hide under the sideboard, revealing as he went a decoration of smilax round his neck, continued in a garland down his spine, fastened at the tail. He did not seem to like it.
“That’s what it is!” said Tom complacently, as Winona pounced on the abject dog and unwreathed him. “Here’s the magazine I got it from. You said to. All there was in this month’s copy was a page of neat and inexpensive grave decorations. I copied thehandsomest one in the bunch, ‘William R. Hicks; complete cost of decoration three dollars and twenty cents.’ That thing in the middle’s a Gates Ajar, or the nearest I could get to it. It got a prize, too.”
“Do you suppose I want William R. Hicks’s grave, or anybody’s grave, on the table when we’re having a special hand-made dinner that I’ve spent most of the afternoon on?” demanded his sister, laughing in spite of her objections.
“What’s the row?” asked Billy cheerfully, appearing in the door with an armful of roses and ferns.
“I followed Win’s directions about the table, and she doesn’t seem to like it,” said Tom in a voice that was intended to sound injured.
“What’s the gridiron for? A gentle reminder of the Cannibal Isles? We don’t really know yet that they’re missionaries!” said Billy.
“Sorry you don’t know a Gates Ajar when you see it,” said Tom, grinning.
“I do,” said Billy decidedly. “That isn’t one. Here are your roses, Winnie. You look like somebody’s step-mother in all that train and glasses. Where did you get them?”
“Winona!” called Louise, tearing downstairs, “I’ve just remembered that Clay has been calling the fritters ‘crullers’ ever since we made them. He’ll send them in with the ice-cream if he isn’t told not to.”
She fled to the kitchen.
“Step-mother.... M’m,” said Tom with a light of mischief in his eye; and followed Louise.
“Lookat the table!” Winona implored Billy.
Billy looked, took in the whole effect, and, as Winona had done, sat down to laugh in comfort.
“It’s not so bad, after all,” he said comfortingly when he was through. “Let’s take the bones out of these green wicket-things, and lay the vines straight across the table. They’ll get into the eats, likely, but we can’t stop for that. Can’t you do anything with that gridiron ajar? I should think the stuff on it would look all right around a low bowl of roses.”
“Maybe it would,” said Winona with renewed courage, and set to work stripping it while Billy took the supports from the smilax arches, and laid it flat, with an occasional rose at intervals. They found a low, wide bowl that, filled with roses, and wound with smilax, made an excellent centerpiece.
Winona stepped back to view the general effect with a sigh of satisfaction.
“Billy! I’ll remember this afternoon of you to the longest day I live!” she said.
“Billy! We want you!” called Louise from the kitchen in a smothered voice. Winona would have gone, too, for she was sure she heard giggles, but just at this moment Clay came in, and his inability to understand why he shouldn’t add a wide red cheese-cloth sash to his white apron drove everything else out of her head. By the time she had argued him out of it the others were back, suspiciously grave.
“Not here yet!” sighed Louise. “I feel as if I couldn’t wait to have them taste my stuffing! Let’s gointo the living-room and sing, or go out back and play tag, or something.”
“Dar dey is!” shouted Clay, running to the window.
The rest rushed, too, and looked over his woolly head.
“A big one and a little one and a middle-sized wife, like the Three Bears,” commented Winona. “They’re coming in by the front way. Oh——”
That was because the fritter-sauce boiled over just as the guests were ushered in. Both the girls forgot their manners, and ran to the kitchen to rescue it. So only Tom and Billy were in the living-room to be introduced.
“My wife and daughter will be here presently,” said Mr. Merriam, who had evidently forgotten that Mrs. Merriam was expected to stay away till about nine. “Tom, will you run up and tell your mother and Winona that our friends are here?”
But even as he spoke Winona, a little breathless, but trained, psyche-knotted and eye-glassed, appeared in the doorway with Louise behind her. She came in with an air of dignity which her mother could not have bettered, and greeted her guests regally, in her excitement forgetting to wait for an introduction.
Not so Tom.
“My step-mother, and my sister,” he whispered in the ear of Mr. Driggs, the tall minister, who promptly addressed Winona as “Mrs. Merriam.” Winona thought he said “Miss,” and went on talking excitedly about everything she could think of. Her father wasdeep in conversation with Mr. Donne, the other guest, who was a classmate of his. Tom’s murmured “Mother isn’t home yet—Winona’s managing things——” scarcely stopped the flood of reminiscences.
“I never heard that your father had a second wife,” remarked Mrs. Driggs to Louise, who had selected her to talk to.
“It’s quite recent,” said Louise sadly; and Mrs. Driggs did not ask any more questions.
Before things got more complicated Clay announced dinner in an awestruck voice, and fled instead of holding aside the portieres for the guests, as he had been instructed. He had a good deal on his mind, for he could not read very well yet, so they had had to sketch each particular thing with a pencil, and pin the series of pictures against the wall in their order as they were to come. The pictures of the oysters and the sweet potatoes were very much alike, and, as Clay confided to Winona afterward, they worried him considerably.
Winona seated her guests with the same dignity which had been hers ever since the train had; and led the conversation in the ways it should go, nobly assisted by Billy. It appeared Billy could talk like a grown-up person of forty when he wanted to—which wasn’t often, for Billy was a rather silent person ordinarily. Tom and Louise were never, either of them, troubled by shyness, and except that they seemed to laugh a little more than the facts warranted they were just as usual.
Every course, from old Mrs. Johnson’s stolen bouillon to the black coffee, came on in its proper place andwas eaten with enthusiasm. As the third course came on without mishap, Winona began to relax, and by the end of the dinner was quite at ease. Mr. Donne, beside her, was liking his dinner so much that for quite awhile Winona did not have to do any talking. When he did talk it was about Ladies’ Aid Societies. Now Mrs. Merriam was the President of the Ladies’ Aid of her church, not to speak of various things that she held minor offices in, and she was quite an authority. Mr. Donne had been told this, and he thought he was talking to Winona about something she was an authority on. Winona was rather bewildered, for she had never attended a Ladies’ Aid meeting in her life, and like the inventor of the Purple Cow, till she was grown up “never hoped to see one.” Nevertheless she struck out valiantly, and was getting on fairly well when Mrs. Driggs’s voice struck across the general tide of talk.