The Little Colonel's House Party Part 15

"One autumn it happened that for several reasons mother had had no invited company for weeks. I was hungry for some of the tarts and marmalade that I knew would appear if the guests would only arrive, and one night a plan came into my head that seemed to me so clever that I could hardly wait for morning to come, in order that I might carry it out.

"Mother sent me on an errand to the village store next day, and on the way I stopped at the doctor's house. I could scarcely reach the great bra.s.s knocker on the front door, but when I did, standing on tiptoe, it sent such a loud clamour through the house that my heart jumped up in my throat, and I was minded to run away. But before I could do that the doctor's wife opened the door. I made my best courtesy that mother had carefully taught me, and then was so embarra.s.sed I could not lift my eyes from the ground. When I spoke, my voice sounded so meek and shy and high up in the air that I scarcely recognised it as mine.

"'Mrs. Mayfair, please come to tea to-morrow,' I said. Then I courtesied again, and hurried off, while Mrs. Mayfair was calling after me to tell my mother that it gave her great pleasure to accept her invitation. But you see it wasn't mother's invitation. I didn't say '_mother_ says please come to tea,' I just asked them to come of my own accord, in a fit of reckless daring, and then waited to see what would happen. I invited nearly all the Dorcas Society."

"And what happened?" asked the Little Colonel, eagerly.

Mrs. Brewster laughed at the remembrance, such a contagious, hearty laugh, that her bonnet-ribbons shook.

"I never said a word about it at home, but next day, a little while before sundown, I went to the window to watch for them. Mother, who had been busy all day, boiling cider and making apple-b.u.t.ter, sat down with her knitting to rest a few minutes before supper. She said she was tired, and that she would not cook much; that mush and milk would be enough.

"She couldn't imagine what had happened when all the ladies appeared, and she sent me to open the door while she hurried to change her dress.

I followed the usual programme; invited them into the guest-chamber to lay aside their wraps and mantles, and then gave them seats in the parlour. Mother was puzzled when she came in and saw them with their bonnets off, for she supposed, when she saw them coming down the path, that they were a committee from the Dorcas Society, on some business.

But presently one of the ladies patted me on the head, and complimented my pretty manners in delivering the invitation to tea.

"If a piece of the sky had fallen, mother could not have been more surprised, but she gave no sign of it then. She only smiled and made a pleasant answer.

"I began to feel very comfortable, and to congratulate myself on the success of my little plan. Presently she excused herself, and beckoned me to follow her out of the room. Without a word, or even a glance of reproach, she bade me run across the street and ask my Aunt Rachel and her daughter Milly to come over at once and help her prepare for the unexpected guests. They were both of them quick, capable women and fine housekeepers, and 'flew around,' as they expressed it, in such a marvellous way that at the proper time the customary feast was spread.

"It did look so good! I walked around the table, my mouth watering as I looked at the tarts and marmalade and spiced buns, and all the other tempting dishes. Mother watched me do it, and then, just before she invited the ladies out to the table, she sent me off to bed without a morsel to eat,--not even a spoonful of mush and milk.

"I lay in an adjoining room, listening to the clatter of knives and forks, and the ladylike hum of conversation, and knew that the good things were slowly but surely disappearing, and that I could not have a taste. I was so hungry and disappointed that I cried myself to sleep.

That disappointment and the lecture which followed next morning was punishment enough, and you may be sure that that was the last time I ever invited my mother's friends on my own responsibility."

Mrs. Brewster paused amid the girls' laughing exclamations, and just then Mrs. Sherman came in from the train, hot and dusty, and her arms full of little packages. "Come on up to my room with me," she said to Mrs. Brewster, who was a frequent and familiar visitor at Locust.

"Don't take her away," begged the Little Colonel, "she is entertaining us."

"My turn now," laughed Mrs. Sherman. And the two ladies went up-stairs, once more leaving the girls to the task of providing their own amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Wasn't that a picture?" said Joyce, when Mrs. Brewster had left the room. "Can't you just see it? that quaint little girl in her old-fashioned dress, going from door to door with her courtesies and her invitations, and, afterward, all the ladies coming down the stiff-bordered path between the rows of hollyhocks. I'd love to draw that picture if I could."

"Try it," urged the girls, so warmly that Joyce went up-stairs for her drawing material. Betty watched her spread her paper on the library table. "I believe that I could put that story into rhyme," she said, after a few minutes of silent thought. "I can feel it humming in my head."

"Oh, I didn't know that you could write poetry," exclaimed Lloyd. "Try it now, and see what you can do. You write the poem, and Joyce will ill.u.s.trate it."

"I have to be by myself when I write, and I never know how long it will take. It is like making b.u.t.ter. Sometimes it will come in a few minutes, and sometimes I have to churn away for hours."

"Begin, anyhow!" insisted the girls, and in a few minutes Betty slipped away to her room. At lunch-time they teased her to show them what she had written, but she had only a few lines completed, and would not let them see even the paper on which she had been scribbling. After lunch the others went to their rooms to write letters and sleep awhile, but she went back to her task. Joyce's picture did not turn out to her satisfaction, and she tore it up, but Betty did her work over and over, rewriting each line many times. When they were all dressed for dinner, she did not appear. Finally Joyce went to see what kept her so long. She found her bending over the paper, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining.

"It is done," she cried, writing the last word with a flourish, "but I hadn't any idea it was so late. I thought I had been up here only a few minutes. Some of the rhymes just _wouldn't_ twist into shape, but I think they fit now."

"I'm going to take it down and show it to the girls, while you dress,"

cried Joyce, catching up the paper and running off with it. Although Betty knew the time was short and she ought to hurry, she could not resist stealing to the banister and leaning over to hear how it sounded when her G.o.dmother, who was sitting in the lower hall with Lloyd and Eugenia, read it aloud.

Jemima Araminta knew Whenever company Sat round the frugal board, they had Plum marmalade for tea.

And spiced buns and toothsome tarts, And divers sweets beside, Were set to tempt the appet.i.te With good housewifely pride.

While walking out one day, it chanced She fell a-pondering sore.

A wicked thought in her small mind Did tempt her more and more.

At all the neighbours' doors she paused, Demure and shy was she.

With downcast eyes, she courtesied, And said, "_Please come to tea._"

Next day along the garden path, Just as the sun went down, A score of ladies primly walked, Each in her Sabbath gown.

Surprised, her mother heard them say, "Dear child! So shy is she!

What pretty manners she did have When asking us to tea."

Jemima now remembers well They once had company, Preserves and buns and toothsome tarts When ne'er a taste had she.

For, supperless, to bed that night, She went, severely chid; No more the neighbours to invite, Save at her mother's bid.

"Bravo! little girl," cried Mrs. Sherman, while the girls clapped loudly. "Have you anything else with you that you have written? If you have, bring it down with you when you come."

"Yes, G.o.dmother," answered Betty, over the banister, blushing until she could feel her cheeks burn. She was all a-tingle at the thought of her G.o.dmother seeing her verses. She wanted her to see them, and yet,--she _couldn't_ take down her old ledger for them all to read and criticise.

Not for worlds would she have Eugenia read her verses on "Friendship,"

and there was one about "Dead Hopes" that she felt none of them would understand. They might even laugh at it.

Several minutes went by before she could make up her mind. When she went down-stairs she had put the old ledger back into her trunk and carried only one of the loose leaves in her hands.

"I'll show the others to G.o.dmother sometime when we are alone," she said to herself, as she went shyly up to the group waiting for her, "Here is one I called 'Night,'" she said, her cheeks flaming with embarra.s.sment.

"There are four verses."

Mrs. Sherman took it, and, glancing down the lines, read aloud the little poem, commencing:

"Oh, peaceful Night, thou shadowy Queen Who rules the realms of shade, Thy throne is on the heaven's arch, Thy crown of stars is made."

"Oh, Betty, that's splendid!" cried the girls, in chorus. "How could you think of it?"

"It is remarkably good for a little girl of twelve," said Mrs. Sherman, glancing over the last verses again. "But I am not surprised. Your mother wrote some beautiful things. She scribbled verses all the time."

"Oh, I didn't know that!" cried Betty. "How I wish I could see some of them!"

"You shall, my dear! I have an old portfolio in the library, full of such things. Poems that she wrote and pictures that Joyce's mother drew; caricatures of the professors, the little pen and ink sketches of the places in the Valley we loved the best. I'll get them out for you, after dinner. You will all be interested in them, especially in a journal they kept for me one summer when I was at the seash.o.r.e. One kept a record of all that happened in the Valley during my absence, and the other ill.u.s.trated it."

"Dinner is ready now," said Lloyd, jumping up as the maid opened the dining-room door. As they all rose to go in, Mrs. Sherman lingered a moment in the hall, to take the paper from Betty's hand.

"Will you give me this little poem, dear?" she asked, slipping an arm around the child's waist. "I am very proud of my little G.o.d-daughter.

The world will hear from you some day, if you keep on singing. Just do your bravest and best, and it will be glad to listen to your music."

She stooped and kissed Betty lightly on the forehead. It was as if she had set the seal of her approval upon her, and to be approved by her beautiful G.o.dmother,--ah, that meant more to the devoted little heart than any one could dream; far more, even, than if she had been made the proud laureate of a queen.

CHAPTER XII.