QUEEN ELSIE VISITS THE COURT
‘An hour and friend with friend will meet,
Lip cling to lip and hand clasp hand.’
‘NOW, Laura,’ asked Bell, when quiet was restored, ‘advise us about
Elsie’s tent. We want it to be perfectly lovely; and you have such good
taste!’
‘Let me think,’ said Laura. ‘Oh, if she were only a brunette instead of
a blonde, we could festoon the tent with that yellow tarlatan I brought
for the play!’
‘What difference does it make whether she is dark or light?’ asked Bell,
obtusely.
‘Why, a room ought to be as becoming as a dress—so Mrs. Pinkerton says.
You know I saw a great deal of her at the hotel; and oh, girls! her
bedroom was the most exquisite thing you ever saw! She had a French
toilet-table, covered with pale blue silk and white marquise
lace,—perfectly lovely,—with yards and yards of robin’s-egg blue watered
ribbon in bows; and on it she kept all her toilet articles, everything in
hammered silver from Tiffany’s with monograms on the back,—three or four
sizes of brushes, and combs, and mirrors, and a full manicure set. It
used to take her two hours to dress; but it was worth it. Oh, such
gorgeous tea-gowns as she had! One of old rose and lettuce was a perfect
dream! She always had her breakfast in bed, you know. I think it’s
delightful to have your breakfast before you get up, and dress as slowly
as you like. I wish mamma would let me do it.’
‘What does she do after she gets dressed in her rows of old lettuce—I
mean her old rows of lettuce?’ asked Polly.
‘Do? Why really, Polly, you are too stupid! What do you suppose she
did? What everybody else does, of course.’
‘Oh!’ said Polly, apologetically.
‘How old is Mrs. Pinkerton?’ asked Margery.
‘Between nineteen and twenty. There is not three years’ difference in
our ages, though she has been married nearly two years. It seems so
funny.’
‘Only nineteen!’ cried Bell. ‘Why, I always thought that she was old as
the hills—twenty-five or thirty at the very least. She always seemed
tired of things.’
‘Well,’ said Laura, in a whisper intended to be too low to reach Mrs.
Winship’s tent, ‘I don’t know whether I ought to repeat what was told me
in confidence, but the fact is—well—she doesn’t like Mr. Pinkerton very
well!’
The other girls, who had not enjoyed the advantages of city life and
travel, looked as dazed as any scandalmonger could have desired.
‘Don’t like him!’ gasped Polly, nearly falling off the stump. ‘Why,
she’s married to him!’
‘Where on earth were you brought up?’ snapped Laura. ‘What difference
does that make? She can’t help it if she doesn’t happen to like her
husband, can she? You can’t make yourself like anybody, can you?’
‘Well, did she ever like him?’ asked Margery; ‘for she’s only been
married a year or two, and it seems to me it might have lasted that long
if there was anything to begin on.’
‘But,’ whispered Laura, mysteriously, ‘you see Mr. Pinkerton was very
rich and the Dentons very poor. Mr. Denton had just died, leaving them
nothing at all to live on, and poor Jessie would have had to teach
school, or some dreadful thing like that. The thought of it almost
killed her, she is so sensitive and so refined. She never told me so in
so many words, but I am sure she married Mr. Pinkerton to save her mother
from poverty; and I pity her from the bottom of my heart.’
‘I suppose it was noble,’ said Bell, in a puzzled tone, ‘if she couldn’t
think of any other way, but—’
‘Well, did she try very hard to think of other ways?’ asked Polly. ‘She
never looked especially noble to me. I thought she seemed like a
die-away, frizzlygig kind of a girl.’
‘I wish, Miss Oliver, that you would be kind enough to remember that Mrs.
Pinkerton is one of my most intimate friends,’ said Laura, sharply. ‘And
I do wish, also, that you wouldn’t talk loud enough to be heard all
through the cañon.’
The colour came into Polly’s cheeks, but before she could answer, Mrs.
Winship walked in, stocking-basket in hand, and seated herself in the
little wicker rocking-chair. Polly’s clarion tones had given her a clue
to the subject, and she thought the discussion needed guidance.
‘You were talking about Mrs. Pinkerton, girls,’ she said, serenely. ‘You
say you are fond of her, Laura, dear, and it seems very ungracious for me
to criticise your friend; that is a thing which most of us fail to bear
patiently. But I cannot let you hold her up as an ideal to be
worshipped, or ask the girls to admire as a piece of self-denial what I
fear was nothing but indolence and self-gratification. You are too young
to talk of these things very much; but you are not too young to make up
your mind that when you agree to live all your life long with a person,
you must have some other feeling than a determination not to teach
school. Jessie Denton’s mother, my dear Laura, would never have asked
the sacrifice of her daughter’s whole life; and Jessie herself would
never have made it had she been less vain, proud, and luxurious in her
tastes, and a little braver, more self-forgetting and industrious. These
are hard words, dear, and I am sorry to use them. She has gained the
riches she wanted,—the carriages and servants, and tea-gowns, and
hammered silver from Tiffany’s, but she looks tired and disappointed, as
Bell says; and I’ve no doubt she is, poor girl.’
‘I don’t think you do her justice, Mrs. Winship; I don’t, indeed,’ said
Laura.
‘If you are really attached to her, Laura, don’t make the mistake of
admiring her faults of character, but try to find her better qualities,
and help her to develop them. It is a fatal thing when girls of your age
set up these false standards, and order their lives by them. There are
worse things than school-teaching, yes, or even floor-scrubbing or
window-washing. Lovely tea-gowns and silver-backed brushes are all very
pretty and nice to have, if they are not gained at the sacrifice of
something better. I should have said to my daughter, had I been Mrs.
Denton, “We will work for each other, my darling, and try to do whatever
God gives us to do; but, no matter how hard life is, your heart is the
most precious thing in the world, and you must never sell that, if we
part with everything else.” Oh, my girls, my girls, if I could only make
you believe that “poor and content is rich, and rich enough.” I cannot
bear to think of your growing year by year into the conviction that these
pretty glittering things of wealth are the true gold of life which
everybody seeks. Forgive me, Laura, if I have hurt your feelings.’
‘I know you would never hurt anybody’s feelings, if you could help it,
Mrs. Winship,’ Laura answered, with a hint of coldness in her voice,
‘though I can’t help thinking that you are a little hard on poor Jessie;
but, even then, one can surely like a person without wishing to do the
very same things she does.’
‘Yes, that is true,’ said Mrs. Winship, gravely. ‘But one cannot
constantly justify a wrong action in another without having one’s own
standard unconsciously lowered. What we continually excuse in other
people we should be inclined by and by to excuse in ourselves. Let us
choose our friends as wisely as possible, and love them dearly, helping
them to grow worthier of our love at the same time we are trying to grow
worthier of theirs; because “we live by admiration, hope, and love,” you
know, but not by admiring and loving the wrong things.
‘But there is the horn, and I hear the boys. Let us come to luncheon,
and tell our good news of Elsie.’
[Picture: Music score and words: With incredible energy. The horn! The
horn! The lus-ty, lus-ty horn! ’Tis not a thing to laugh to scorn, A
thing to laugh to scorn!]
Long before the boys appeared in sight, their voices rang through the
cañon in a chorus that woke the echoes, and presently they came into
view, bearing two quarters and a saddle of freshly killed mutton, hanging
from a leafy branch swung between Jack’s sturdy shoulder and Geoff’s.
‘A splendid “still hunt” this morning, Aunt Truth!’ exclaimed Jack.
‘Game plenty and not too shy, dogs in prime condition, hunters ditto.
Behold the result!’
The girls could scarcely tell whether or no Laura was offended at Aunt
Truth’s unexpected little lecture. She did not appear quite as
unrestrained as usual, but as everybody was engaged in the preparations
for Elsie’s welcome there was a general atmosphere of hilarity and
confusion, so that no awkwardness was possible.
The tool-shop resounded with blows of hammer and steel. Dicky was under
everybody’s feet, and his ‘seven or ten frogs,’ together with his
unrivalled collection of horned toads, were continually escaping from
their tin pails and boxes in the various tents, and everybody was obliged
to join in the search to recover and re-incarcerate them, in order to
keep the peace.
Hop Yet was making a gold and silver cake, with ‘Elsie’ in pink letters
on chocolate frosting. Philip had pitched the new tent so that in one
corner there was a slender manzanita-tree which had been cropped for some
purpose or other. He had nailed a cross-piece on this, so that it
resembled the letter T, and was now laboriously boring holes and fitting
in pegs, that Elsie might have a sort of closet behind her bed.
As for the rustic furniture, the girls and boys declared it to be too
beautiful for words. They stood in circles about it and admired it
without reserve, each claiming that his own special piece of work was the
gem of the collection. The sunlight shining through the grey and green
tints of the tent was voted perfection, Philip’s closet a miracle of
ingenuity, the green and white straw matting an inspiration.
The looking-glass had been mounted on a packing-box, and converted by
Laura into a dressing-table that rivalled Mrs. Pinkerton’s; for green
tarlatan and white mosquito-netting had been so skilfully combined that
the traditional mermaid might have been glad to make her toilet there
‘with a comb and a glass in her hand.’ The rest of the green and white
gauzy stuff had been looped from the corners of the tent to the centre of
the roof-piece, and delicate tendrils of wild clematis climbed here and
there as if it were growing, its roots plunged in cunningly hidden
bottles of water. Bell had gone about with pieces of awning cloth and
green braid, and stitched an elaborate system of pockets on the inside of
the tent wherever they would not be too prominent. There were tiny
pockets for needle-work, thimbles, and scissors, medium-sized pockets for
soap and combs and brushes, bigger pockets for shoes and slippers and
stockings, and mammoth pockets for anything else that Elsie might ordain
to put in a pocket.
By four o’clock in the afternoon Margery had used her clever fingers to
such purpose that a white silesia flag, worked with the camp name,
floated from the tip top of the front entrance to the tent. The ceremony
of raising the flag was attended with much enthusiasm, and its
accomplishment greeted by a deafening cheer from the entire party.
‘Unless one wants Paradise,’ sighed Margery, ‘who wouldn’t be contented
with dear Camp Chaparral?’
‘Who would live in a house, any way?’ exclaimed Philip. ‘Sniff this air,
and look up at that sky!’
‘And this is what they call “roughing it,” in Santa Barbara,’ quoth Dr.
Winship. ‘Why, you youngsters have made that tent fit for the occupancy
of a society belle.’
‘Now, let’s organise for reception!’ cried Geoffrey. ‘Assemble, good
people! Come over here, Aunt Truth! I will take the chair myself, since
I don’t happen to see anybody who would fill it with more dignity.’
‘I am going to mount my broncho and go out on the road to meet my beloved
family,’ said Jack, sauntering up to the impromptu council-chamber.
‘How can you tell when they will arrive?’ asked Mrs. Winship.
‘I can make a pretty good guess. They’ll probably start from Tacitas as
early as eight or nine o’clock, if Elsie is well. Let’s see: it’s about
twenty-five miles, isn’t it, Uncle Doc? Say twenty-three to the place
where they turn off the main road. Well, I’ll take a bit of lunch, ride
out ten or twelve miles, hitch my horse in the shade, and wait.’
‘Very well,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It is not usual for committees to appoint
themselves, but as you are a near relative of our distinguished guests we
will grant you special consideration and order you to the front. Ladies
and gentlemen, passing over the slight informality of the nomination, all
in favour of appointing Mr. John Howard Envoy Extraordinary please
manifest it by the usual sign.’
Six persons yelled ‘Ay,’ four raised the right hand, and one stood up.
‘There seems to be a slight difference of opinion as to the usual sign.
All right.—Contrary minded!’
‘No!’ shouted Polly, at the top of her lungs.
‘It is a unanimous vote,’ said Geoffrey, crushingly, bringing down his
fist as an imaginary gavel with incredible force and dignity. ‘Dr. and
Mrs. Winship, will you oblige the Chair by acting as a special Reception
Committee?’
‘Certainly,’ responded the doctor, smilingly. ‘Will the Chair kindly
outline the general policy of the committee?’
‘Hm-m-m! Yes, certainly—of course. The Chair suggests that the
Reception Committee—well, that they stay at home and—receive the
guests,—yes, that will do very nicely.
All-in-favour-and-so-forth-it-is-a-vote-and-so-ordered. Secretary will
please spread a copy on the minutes.’ Gavel.
‘I rise to a point of order,’ said Jack, sagely. ‘There is no secretary
and there are no minutes.’
‘Mere form,’ said the Chair; ‘sit down; there will be minutes in a
minute,—got to do some more things first; that will do, _sit down_. Will
the Misses Burton and Messrs. Burton and Noble kindly act as Committee on
Decoration?’
‘Where’s the Committee on Music, and Refreshments, and Olympian Games,
and all that sort of thing?’ interrupted Polly, who had not the slightest
conception of parliamentary etiquette; ‘and why don’t you hurry up and
put me on something?’
‘If Miss Oliver refuses to bridle her tongue, and persists in
interrupting the business of the meeting, the Chair will be obliged to
remove her,’ said Geoffrey, with chilling emphasis.
Polly rose again, undaunted. ‘I would respectfully ask the Chair, who
put him in the chair, any way?’
‘Question!’ roared Philip.
‘Second the motion!’ shrieked Bell, that being the only parliamentary
expression she knew.
‘Order!’ cried Geoffrey in stentorian accents. ‘I will adjourn the
meeting and clear the court-room unless there is order.’
‘Do!’ remarked Polly, encouragingly. ‘I will rise again, like Phœbus,
from my ashes, to say that—’
Here Jack sprang to his feet. ‘I would suggest to the Chair that the
last speaker amend her motion by substituting the word “Phœnix” for
“Phœbus.”’
‘Accept the amendment,’ said Polly, serenely, amidst the general
hilarity.
‘Question!’ called Bell, with another mighty projection of memory into a
missionary meeting that she had once attended.
‘I am not aware that there is any motion before the house,’ said
Geoffrey, cuttingly.
‘Second the motion!’
‘Second the amendment!’ shouted the girls.
‘Ladies, there _is_ no motion. Will you oblige the Chair by remaining
quiet until speech is requested?’
‘Move that the meeting be adjourned and another one called, with a new
Chair!’ remarked Margery, who felt that the honour of her sex was at
stake.
‘Move that this motion be so ordered and spread upon the minutes, and a
copy of it be presented to the Chairman,’ suggested Philip.
‘Move that the copy be appropriately bound in _calf_,’ said Jack, dodging
an imaginary blow.
‘Move that the other committees be elected by ballot,’ concluded Scott
Burton.
‘This is simply disgraceful!’ exclaimed the Chair. ‘Order! order! I
appoint Miss Oliver Committee on Entertainment, with a view of keeping
her still.’
This was received with particular as well as general satisfaction.
‘Miss Winship, we appoint you Committee on Music.’
‘All right. Do you wish it to be original?’
‘Certainly not; we wish it to be good.’
‘But we only know one chorus, and that’s “My Witching Dinah Snow.”’
‘Never mind; either write new words to that tune or sing tra-la-la to it.
Mr. Richard Winship, the Chair appoints you Committee on Menagerie, and
suggests that as we have proclaimed a legal holiday, you give your
animals the freedom of the city.’
‘Don’t know what freedom of er city means,’ said Dicky, who feared that
he was being made the butt of ridicule.
‘Why, we want you to allow the captives to parade in the evening, with
torch-lights and mottoes.’
‘All right!’ cried Dicky, kindling in an instant; ‘’n’ Luby, ’n’ the
doat, ’n’ my horn’ toads, all e’cept the one that just gotted away in
Laura’s bed; but may be she’ll find him to-night, so they’ll be all
there.’
This was too much for the various committees, and Laura’s wild shriek was
the signal for a hasty adjournment. A common danger restored peace to
the assembly, and they sought the runaway in perfect harmony.
‘Well,’ said Jack, when quiet was restored, ‘I am going a little distance
up the Pico Negro trail; there are some magnificent Spanish bayonets
growing there, and if you’ll let me have Pancho, Uncle Doc, we can bring
down four of them and lash them to each of the corners of Elsie’s
tent,—they’ll keep fresh several days in water, you know.’
‘Take him, certainly,’ said Dr. Winship.
‘Do let me go with you!’ pleaded Laura, with enthusiasm. ‘I should like
the walk so much.’
‘It’s pretty rough, Laura,’ objected Margery. ‘If you couldn’t endure
our walk this morning, you would never get home alive from Pico Negro.’
‘Oh, that was in the heat of the day,’ she answered. ‘I feel equal to
any amount of walking now, if Jack doesn’t mind taking me.’
‘Delighted, of course, Miss Laura. You’ll be willing to carry home one
of the trees, I suppose, in return for the pleasure of my society?’
‘Snub him severely, Laura,’ cried Bell; ‘we never allow him to say such
things unreproved.’
‘I think he is snubbed too much already,’ replied Laura, with a charming
smile, ‘and I shall see how a course of encouragement will affect his
behaviour.’
‘That will be what I long have sought,
And mourned because I found it not,’
sang Jack, nonchalantly.
‘Oh, Laura,’ remonstrated Bell, ‘think twice before you encourage him in
his dreadful ways. We have studied him very carefully, and we know that
the only way to live with him is to keep him in a sort of “pint pot”
where we can hold the lid open just a little, and clap it down suddenly
whenever he tries to spring out.’
‘Do not mind that young person, Miss Laura, but form your own impressions
of my charming character. Excuse me, please, while I put on a celluloid
collar, and make some few changes in my toilet necessary to a proper
appearance in your distinguished company.’
‘I prefer you as you are,’ answered Laura, laughingly. ‘Let us start at
once.’
‘Do you hear that, young person? She prefers me as I are! Now see what
magic power her generosity has upon me!’ And he darted into the tent,
from which he issued in a moment with his Derby hat, a manzanita cane, a
pocket-handkerchief tied about his throat, and a flower pinned on his
flannel camping-shirt—a most ridiculous figure, since nothing seems so
out of place in the woods as any suggestion of city costumes or customs.
Laura was in high good-humour, and looked exceedingly brilliant and
pretty, as she always did when she was the central figure of any group or
the bright particular star of any occasion.
‘Be home before dark,’ said Dr. Winship. ‘Pancho, keep a look-out for
the pack-mule. Truth, one of the pack-mules has disappeared.’
‘So? Dumpling or Ditto?’
‘Ditto, curiously enough. His name should have led him not to set an
example, but to follow one.’
* * * * *
Elsie came.
Perhaps you thought that this was going to be an exciting story, and that
something would happen to keep her at the Tacitas ranch; but nothing did.
Everything came to pass exactly as it was arranged, and Jack met his
mother and sister at twelve o’clock some four miles from the camp, and
escorted them to the gates.
[Picture: Elsie came]
‘Welcome’ had been painted on twenty different boards or bits of white
cloth and paper, and nailed here and there on the trees that lined the
rough wood-road; the strains of an orchestra, formed of a guitar, banjo,
castanets, Chinese fiddle, and tin cans, greeted them from a distance,
but were properly allowed to die away in silence when the guest neared
the tents. Everything wore a new and smiling face, and Elsie never came
more dangerously near being squeezed to death.
Elsie, in the prettiest of gingham dresses, and her cloud of golden hair
braided in two funny little pugs to keep it out of the dust; Elsie, with
a wide hat that shaded her face, already a little tanned and burned, no
longer colourless; Elsie, with no lines of pain in her pretty forehead,
and the hollow ring gone from her voice; Elsie, who jumped over the wheel
of the wagon, and hugged her huggers with the strength of a young bear!
It was too good to believe, and nobody did quite believe it for days.
At three o’clock the happiest party in the world assembled at the rough
dining-table under the sycamore-trees.
Elsie beamed upon the feast from the high-backed manzanita chair, a faint
colour in her cheeks, and starry prisms of light in a pair of eyes that
had not sparkled for many a weary month. Hop Yet smiled a trifle
himself, wore his cap with a red button on the top to wait upon the
table, and ministered to the hungry people with more interest and
alacrity than he had shown since he had been dragged from Santa Barbara,
his Joss, and his nightly game of fantan. And such a dinner as he had
prepared in honour of the occasion!—longer by four courses than usual,
and each person was allowed two plates in the course of the meal.
BILL OF FARE FOR HER MAJESTY’S DINNER
Quail Soup. Crackers.
Chili Colorado.
(Mutton stew, in Spanish style, with Chili peppers,
tomatoes, and onions.)
Cold Boiled Ham. Fried Potatoes.
Apples and Onions stewed together.
Ginger-snaps. Pickles.
Peaches, Apricots, and Nectarines.
California Nuts and Raisins. Coffee.
And last of all, a surprise of Bell’s, flapjacks, long teased for by the
boys, and prepared and fried by her own hands while the merry party
waited at table, to get them smoking hot.
She came in flushed with heat and pride, the prettiest cook anybody ever
saw, with her hair bobbed up out of the way and doing its best to escape,
a high-necked white apron, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and an
insinuating spot of batter in the dimple of her left cheek.
‘There!’ she cried, joyfully, as she deposited a heaping plate in front
of her mother, and set the tin can of maple syrup by its side. ‘Begin on
those, and I’ll fry like lightning on two griddles to keep up with you,’
and she rushed to the brush kitchen to turn her next instalments that had
been left to brown. Hop Yet had retired to a distant spot by the brook,
and was washing dish-towels. All Chinese cooks are alike in their horror
of a woman in the kitchen; but some of them will unbend so far as to
allow her to amuse herself so long as they are not required to witness
the disagreeable spectacle.
Bell delicately inserted the cake-turner under the curled edges of the
flapjacks and turned them over deftly, using a little too much force,
perhaps, in the downward stroke when she flung them back on the griddle.
‘Seems to me they come down with considerable of a thud,’ she said,
reflectively. ‘I hope they’re not tough, for I should never hear the
last of it. Guess I’ll punch one with the handle of this tin shovel, and
see how it acts. Goodness! it’s sort of—elastic. That’s funny. Well,
perhaps it’s the way they ought to look.’ Here she transferred the
smoking mysteries to her plate, passed a bit of pork over the griddles,
and, after ladling out eight more, flew off to the group at the table.
‘Are they good?’ she was beginning to ask, when the words were frozen on
her lips by the sight of a significant tableau.
The four boys were standing on the bench that served instead of
dining-chairs, each with a plate and a pancake on the table in front of
them. Jack held a hammer and spike, Scott Burton a hatchet, Geoffrey a
saw, and Philip a rifle. Bell was nothing if not intuitive. No
elaborate explanations ever were needed to show her a fact. Without a
word she flung the plate of flapjacks she held as far into a thicket as
she had force to fling it, and then dropped on her knees.
“‘Shoot, if you must, this old grey head,
But spare my flapjacks, sirs,” she said!
‘What’s the matter with them? Tough? I refuse to believe it. Your
tools are too dull,—that’s all. Use more energy! Nothing in this world
can be accomplished without effort.’
‘They’re a lovely brown,’ began Mrs. Winship, sympathetically.
‘And they have a very good flavour,’ added Elsie.
‘Don’t touch them, dearest!’ cried Bell, snatching the plate from under
Elsie’s very nose. ‘I won’t have you made ill by my failures. But as
for the boys, I don’t care a fig for them. Let them make flapjacks more
to their taste, the odious things! Polly Oliver, did you put in that
baking powder, as I told you, while I went for the pork?’
Polly blanched. ‘Baking powder?’ she faltered.
‘Yes, baking powder! B-A-K-I-N-G P-O-W-D-E-R! Do I make myself plain?’
‘Oh, baking powder, to be sure. Well, now that you mention the matter, I
do remember that Dicky called me away just as I was getting it; and now
that I think of it, Elsie came just afterwards, and—and—’
‘And that’s the whole of my story, O,’ sang Jack. ‘I recommend the
criminal to the mercy of the court.’
‘A case of too many cooks,’ laughed Dr. Winship. ‘Cheer up, girls;
better fortune next time.’
‘There are eight more of them burning on the griddles this moment,
Polly,’ said Bell, scathingly; ‘and as they are yours, not mine, I advise
you to throw them in the brook, with the rest of the batter, so that Hop
Yet won’t know that there has been a failure.’
‘Some people blight everything they touch,’ sighed Polly, gloomily, as
she departed for the kitchen.
‘But when I lie in the green kirkyard—
‘Oh, Polly, dear,’ interrupted Margery, ‘that apology will not serve any
longer; you’ve used it too often.’
‘This is going to be entirely different,’ continued Polly, tragically.
‘But when I lie in the green kirkyard,
With the mould upon my breast,
Say not that she made flapjacks well,
Only, she did her best.’
‘We promise!’ cried Bell.