The Camerons of Highboro Part 4

That had been a good deal for Aunt Margaret to say. Elliott had realized it at the time and wondered a little; now she understood the words, or thought she did. Why, even drying milk-pans took on a certain distinction when it was done in Aunt Jessica's presence!

Then Aunt Jessica said something that really did surprise her young guest. She had been watching the girl closely, quite without Elliott's knowledge.

"Perhaps you would like this for your own special part of the work,"

she said pleasantly. "We each have our little ch.o.r.es, you know. I couldn't let every girl attempt the milk things, but you are so careful and thorough that I haven't the least hesitation about giving them to you. Now I am going to wash the separator. Watch me, and then you will know just what to do."

The words left Elliott gasping. Wash the separator, all by herself, every day--or was it twice a day?--for as long as she stayed here! And pans--all these pans? What was a separator, anyway? She wished flatly to refuse, but the words stuck in her throat. There was something about Aunt Jessica that you couldn't say no to. Aunt Jessica so palpably expected you to be delighted. She was discriminating, too.

She had recognized at once that Elliott was not an ordinary girl.

But--but--

It was all so disconcerting that self-possessed Elliott stammered. She stammered from pure surprise and chagrin and a confusing mixture of emotions, but what she stammered was in answer to Aunt Jessica's tone and extracted from her by the force of Aunt Jessica's personality. The words came out in spite of herself.

"Oh--oh, thank you," she said, a bit blankly. Then she blushed with confusion. How awkward she had been. Oughtn't Aunt Jessica to have thanked her?

If Aunt Jessica noticed either the confusion or the blankness, she gave no sign.

"That will be fine!" she said heartily. "I saw by the way you handled those pans that I could depend on you."

Insensibly Elliott's chin lifted. She regarded the pans with new interest. "Of course," she a.s.sented, "one has to be particular."

"Very particular," said Aunt Jessica, and her dark eyes smiled on the girl.

The words, as she spoke them, sounded like a compliment. It mightn't be so bad, Elliott reflected, to wash milk-pans every morning. And in Rome you do as the Romans do. She watched closely while Aunt Jessica washed the separator. She could easily do that, she was sure. It did not seem to require any unusual skill or strength or brain-power.

"It is not hard work," said Aunt Jessica, pleasantly. "But so many girls aren't dependable. I couldn't count on them to make everything clean. Sometimes I think just plain dependableness is the most delightful trait in the world. It's so rare, you know."

Elliott opened her eyes wide. She had been accustomed to hear charm and wit and vivacity spoken of in those terms, but dependableness? It had always seemed such a homely, commonplace thing, not worth mentioning. And here was Aunt Jessica talking of it as of a crown jewel! Right down in her heart at that minute Elliott vowed that the separator should always be clean.

The separator, however, must not commit her indiscriminately, she saw that clearly. Perhaps in fact, it would save her. Hadn't Aunt Jessica said each had her own tasks? Ergo, you let others alone. But she had an uncomfortable feeling that this reasoning might prove false in practice; in this household a good many tasks seemed to be pooled. How about them?

And then Laura looked up from her jars and said the oddest thing yet in all this morning of odd sayings: "Oh, Mother, mayn't we take our dinner out? It is such a perfectly beautiful day!" As though a beautiful day had anything to do with where you ate your dinner!

But Aunt Jessica, without the least surprise in her voice, responded promptly: "Why, yes! We have three hours free now, and it seems a crime to stay in the house."

What in the world did they mean?

Priscilla seemed to have no difficulty in understanding. She jumped up and down and cried: "Oh, goody! goody! We're going to take our dinner out! We're going to take our dinner out! Isn't it _jolly_?"

She was standing in front of Elliott as she spoke, and the girl felt that some reply was expected of her. "Why, can we? Where do we go?"

she asked, exactly as though she expected to see a hotel spring up out of the ground before her eyes.

"Lots of days we do," said Priscilla. "We'll find a nice place. Oh, I'm glad it takes peas three whole hours to can themselves. I think they're kind of slow, though, don't you?"

Laura noticed the bewilderment on Elliott's face. "Priscilla means that we are going to eat our dinner out-of-doors while the peas cook in the hot-water bath," she explained. "Don't you want to pack up the cookies? You will find them in that stone crock on the first shelf in the pantry, right behind the door. There's a pasteboard box in there, too, that will do to put them in."

"How many shall I put up?" questioned Elliott.

"Oh, as many as you think we'll eat. And I warn you we have good appet.i.tes."

Those were the vaguest directions, Elliott thought, that she had ever heard; but she found the box and the stone pot of cookies and stood a minute, counting the people who were to eat them. Four right here in the kitchen and five--no, six--out-of-doors. Would two dozen cookies be enough for ten people? She put her head into the kitchen to ask, but there was no one in sight, so she had to decide the point by herself. After nibbling a crumb she thought not, and added another dozen. And then there was still so much room left that she just filled up the box, regardless. Afterward she was very glad of it. She wouldn't have supposed it possible for ten people to eat as many cookies as those ten people ate after all the other things they had eaten.

By the time she had finished her calculations with the cookies, Aunt Jessica and Laura and Priscilla were ready. When Elliott emerged from the pantry, the little car was at the kitchen door, with a hamper and two pails of water in it, and on the back seat a long, queer-looking box that Laura told Elliott was a fireless cooker.

"Home-made," said Laura, "you'd know that to look at it, but it works just as well. It's the grandest thing, especially when we want to eat out-of-doors. Saves lots of trouble."

Elliott gasped. "You mean you carry it along to cook the dinner in?"

"Why, the dinner's cooking in it now! Hop on, everybody. Mother, you take the wheel. Elliott and I will ride on the steps."

Away they sped, b.u.mpity-b.u.mp, to the hay-field, picking up the carrot-h.o.e.rs as they went. It is astonishing how many people can cling to one little car, when those people are neither very wide nor, some of them, very tall. From the hay-field they nosed their way into a little dell, all ferns and cool white birches, and far above, a canopy of leaf-traceried blue sky. In the next few minutes it became very plain to the new cousin that the Camerons were used to doing this kind of thing. Every one seemed to know exactly what to do. The pails of water were swung to one side; the fireless cooker took up its position on a flat gray rock. The hamper yielded loaves of bread--light and dark, that one cut for oneself on a smooth white board--and a basket stocked with plates and cups and knives and forks and spoons. Potted meat and potatoes and two kinds of vegetables, as they were wanted, came from the fireless cooker, all deliciously tender and piping hot.

It was like a cafeteria in the open, thought Elliott, except that one had no tray.

And every one laughed and joked and had a good time. Even Elliott had a fairly good time, though she thought it was thoroughly queer. You see, it had never occurred to her that people could pick up their dinner and run out-of-doors into any lovely spot that they came to, to eat it. She wasn't at all sure she cared for that way of doing things.

But she liked the beauty of the little dell, the ferny smell of it, and the sunshine and cheerfulness. The occasional darning-needles, and small green worms, and black or other colored bugs, she enjoyed less.

She hadn't been accustomed to a.s.sociate such things with her dinner.

But n.o.body else seemed to mind; perhaps the others were used to taking bugs and worms with their meals. If one appeared, they threw him away and went on eating as though nothing had happened.

And of course it was rather clever of them, the girl reflected, to take a picnic when they could get it. If they hadn't done so, she didn't quite see, judging by the portion of a day she had so far observed, how they could have got any picnics at all. The method utilized sc.r.a.ps of time, left-overs and between-times, that were good for little else. It was a rather arresting discovery, to find out that people could divert themselves without giving up their whole time to it. But, after all, it wasn't a method for her. She was positive on that point. It seemed the least little bit common, too--such whole-hearted absorption as the Camerons showed in pursuits that were just plain work.

"Stan," she demanded, late that afternoon, "is there any tennis here?"

"Not so you'd notice it. What are you thinking of, in war-time, Elliott? Uncle Samuel expects every farmer to do his duty. All the men and older boys around here have either volunteered or been drafted. So we're all farmers, especially the girls. _Quod erat demonstrandum_.

Savvy?"

"Any luncheons?"

"Meals, Lot, plain meals."

"Parties?"

Stannard threw up his hands. "Never heard of 'em!"

"Canoeing?"

"No water big enough."

"I suppose n.o.body here thinks of motoring for pleasure."

"Never. Too busy."

"Or gets an invitation for a spin?"

"You're behind the times."

"So I see."

"Harry told me that this summer is extra strenuous," Stannard explained; "but they've always rather gone in for the useful, I take it. Had to, most likely. They'd be all right, too, if they didn't live so. They're a good sort, an awfully good sort. But, ginger, how a fellow'd have to hump to keep up with 'em! I don't try. I do a little, and then sit back and call it done."

If Elliott hadn't been so miserable, she would have laughed. Stannard had hit himself off very well, she thought. He had his good points, too. Not once had he reminded her that she hadn't intended to spend her summer on a farm. But she was too unhappy to tease him as she might have done at another time. She was still bewildered and inclined to resent the trick life had played her. The prospect didn't look any better on close inspection than it had at first; rather worse, if anything. Imagine her, Elliott Cameron pitching hay! Not that any one had asked her to. But how could a person live for six weeks with these people and not do what they did? Such was Elliott's code. Delightful people, too. But she didn't wish to pitch hay and she loathed washing dishes. There was something so messy about dish-washing, ordinary dish-washing; milk-pans were different.