In the following days, the girls and Tommy turned their attention to
plans for the barbecue. The first thing to be sure of was a full moon.
This came along the last week in June, so they made their arrangements
accordingly.
Buzzy and Sally took almost as much interest in the affair as the girls
themselves. All that day, when it finally did arrive, they worked
gathering wood for the fire, knocking together temporary picnic tables,
and digging the barbecue pit at the back of the house. Doris was making
the lemonade and said she had cut and squeezed lemons until her whole
mouth was puckered up, and her fingernails felt pickled. Kit was
everywhere at once, it seemed. She showed Buzzy how to make the spit for
the meat to be cooked on. She beguiled Matt, who had come down from
Maple Grove to help around a bit, into moving the phonograph out on the
front porch.
It did seem as if all Elmhurst and surrounding territory had turned out
to show its neighborly spirit. There were cars parked along the road, in
the barnyard, the driveway, and everywhere.
“I shouldn’t wonder, Margie, if we had as many as a hundred folks here
tonight,” remarked Becky.
“More likely two hundred, Rebecca. It looks like a big crowd all right.”
They were up on the porch where Mrs. Craig hovered between the lounge
chair where Mr. Craig sat, and her various guests, welcoming each in her
own charming way.
Doris and Kit followed Jean’s lead. First Jean rounded up the girls whom
she had met on the ride with Sally and introduced them to the other
Craig sisters. Tommy could not be located from one minute to another. He
raced all over the grounds. One minute he was back by the barbecue pit
trying to supervise things but generally heckling Buzzy. The next minute
he was back in the front of the house dodging in and out of the crowd.
But Doris and Kit led the other girls over to where the lemonade, ice
cream and cake was laid out and asked them to serve. It was much better
than standing around, shy and silent, not knowing what to do next. Kit
found one girl, Abby Tucker, leaning disconsolately against a pear tree
at the side of the drive. Her white dress was too short for her, and her
hair was straggling in limp strands down her back. She looked lonely and
rather indignant too.
“Don’t you want to come over and help us with the ice cream?” asked Kit.
“No, I don’t,” said Abby flatly. “They always ask me to help pass things
to eat at the church suppers. I want to have a good time myself tonight.
Though we aren’t going to have a good time.”
Kit looked at her doubtfully. She thoroughly realized the state of mind
that will not let itself be happy, that in fact, finds its happiness in
being unhappy, but Abby’s moroseness baffled her.
“Don’t you like it here?” she asked.
Abby nodded.
“Don’t you know anyone?”
“Know most of them.”
“Then what is it?” Kit laid her arm timidly around the stooped shoulders
and at the touch of real human sympathy, Abby’s reserve melted.
“My new shoes pinch awful,” she exploded.
Kit took her straight up to the house to her own room, and ransacked
closets and shoe boxes until she found a pair of loafers to fit Abby,
and the latter came down again smiling and radiant, ready to serve ice
cream, or make herself agreeable in any way she could.
Sally came up to the porch, personally conducting her mother to Mrs.
Craig. She was a tall, fair-haired woman with deep dimples like the
children’s and a happy face. Seated in a chair on the porch with the
roses and honeysuckle shedding a perfume around, she breathed a sigh of
relief.
“Seems so nice to sit up here again, Mrs. Craig,” she said. “Sally’s
told me all about how you’ve fixed the place up till it seemed as if I
couldn’t wait to see it. I used to drive over once in a while after
Father died, and get some slips of flowering quince and rose bushes to
set out. You know I love every blade of grass in the garden and every
pine cone on those trees.”
“It’s too bad you and the children couldn’t have had it.”
“Well, I don’t know. I never fret much over what has to be. Maybe this
boy Ralph is all right. He’s my nephew, but I’ve never seen him. His
father was a claim settler out in Oregon first off, when Cousin France
married him. We called her that. Her name was Francelia. Good stock, I
guess. I wish Buzzy could know him, he’s so set on being a rancher. I
suppose settling and ranching’s about the same thing?”
“Not quite,” Mrs. Craig told her. Then came a chat about her own
father’s ranch in California, and when Sally came back after her mother,
she found her animated and interested over Buzzy’s future.
Kit and Etoile were arranging a jam session for alternate Saturday
afternoons, the ones between to be given up to tennis and basketball.
Those who couldn’t dance would be taught by the others. Ingeborg and
Astrid and Hedda Hagerstrom stood listening and agreeing with shining
eyes and eager faces. Hedda was short and strong-looking, with the
bluest eyes possible and heavy blonde braids. She stared at Kit with
wide-eyed wonder, Kit radiant and joyous in a yellow chambray sun-back
dress, with a sprig of rambler roses in her hair.
“You’ll come, won’t you, Hedda?” she asked. “And bring any other girls
over your way.”
“There’s only Abby over my way. We live on the same road.”
“Then bring Abby, but tell her to wear old shoes. We ought to find
enough girls to make up a good team out here.”
“Do you like hikes?” asked Lucy Peckham. “I think it would be fun to
have a hiking club, and each week tramp away off somewhere. There’s ever
so many places I want to see.”
“It’s a good idea, Lucy,” Sally exclaimed.
The crowd began to break up and the Craigs stood on the porch saying
goodbye to everyone. It was after twelve before the last car had driven
away. Tommy was found sound asleep in the living room on the couch. Jean
and Doris hunted in the grass for lost spoons and ice cream saucers.
“It was a good party,” Jean said happily. “We got acquainted with all
our neighbors, and now I feel as if I could go ahead and organize
something.”