|YOU may think that Lilia's “mortification” was quite an excitement
in this enterprising young household; yet I assure you that never
twenty-four hours passed but a ridiculous adventure of some kind
overtook the girls. The daily bulletin which they carried over to Mrs.
Carter at the Winter Farm kept the worthy inmates in constant wonderment
as to what would happen next. Sometimes there was a regular programme
for the next day, prepared the night before, but oftener, things
happened of themselves, and when they do that, you know, pleasure seems
a deal more satisfying and delightful, because it is unexpected. Uncle
Harry was in great demand, and very often made one of the gay party of
young folks off for a frolic. They defied King Winter openly, and went
on all sorts of excursions, even on a bona-fide picnic, notwithstanding
the two feet of snow on the ground. The way of it was this: On Friday,
the boys--Hugh Pennell, Bell's cousin, Jack Brayton, and the young
schoolmaster--turned the great bare hall in the top of the old Winship
family house into a woodland bower.
By the way, I have not told you much about Geoffrey Strong yet, because
the girls of the story have had everything their own way, but Geoffrey
Strong was well worth knowing. He was only eighteen years old, but had
finished his sophomore year at Bowdoin College, and was teaching the
district school that he might partly earn the money necessary to take
him through the remainder of the course. He was as sturdy and strong
as his name, or as one of the stout pine-trees of his native State, as
gentle and chivalrous as a boy knight of the olden time; as true and
manly a lad, and withal as good and earnest a teacher, notwithstanding
his youth, as any little country urchin could wish. Mr. Win-ship was his
guardian, and thus he had become quite one of the Winship family.
The boys were making the picnic grounds when I interrupted my story with
this long parenthesis. They took a large pair of old drop curtains used
at some time or other in church tableaux, and made a dark green carpet
by stretching them across the floor smoothly and tacking them down; they
wreathed the pillars and trimmed the doors and windows with evergreens,
and then planted young spruce and cedar and hemlock trees in the corners
or scattered them about the room firmly rooted in painted nail-kegs.
“It looks rather jolly, boys, doesn't it?” cried Jack, rubbing his cold
fingers, “but I'm afraid we've gone as far as we can; we can't make
birds and flowers and brooks!”
“What's the special difficulty?” asked Geoffrey. “We'll borrow
Grandmother Winship's two cages of canaries and Mrs. Adams' two; then
we'll bring over Mrs. Carter's pet parrot, and altogether we'll be
musical enough, considering the fact that the thermometer is below
zero.”
This suggestion of Geoff's they accordingly adopted, and their mimic
forest became tuneful.
The next stroke of genius came from Hugh Pennell. He found bunches of
white and yellow everlastings at home with which he mixed some cleverly
constructed bright tissue-paper flowers, of mysterious botanical
structure. He planted these in pots, and tied them to shrubs, and
behold, their forest bloomed!
“But we have finished now, boys,” said Hugh, dejectedly, as he put his
last bed of whiteweed and buttercups under a shady tree. (They
were made of paper, and were growing artistically in a moss-covered
chopping-tray.) “We can't get up a brook, and a brook is a handy thing
at a picnic, too. Good for the small children to fall into, good for
drinking, good for dish-washing, good for its cool and musical tinkle.”
“I have an idea,” suggested Jack, who was mounted on a step-ladder
busily engaged in tying a stuffed owl and a blue jay to a tree-top. “I
have an idea. We can fill the ice-water tank, put it on a shelf, let the
water run into a tub, then station a boy in the corner to keep filling
the tank from the tub. There's your stagnant pool and your running
streamlet. There's your drinking-water, your dish-washer, your musical
tinkle, and possibly your small child's watery grave. What could be more
romantic?”
“Out with him!” shouted Geoff. “He ought to be drowned for proposing
such an apology for a brook.”
“I fail to see the point,” said Jack; “the sound would be sylvan and
suggestive, and I've no doubt the girls would be charmed.”
“We'll brook no further argument on the subject,” retorted Hugh; “the
afternoon is running away with us. We might bring up the bath-tub, or
the watering-trough, sink it in an evergreen bank and surround it with
house plants, but I don't think it would satisfy us exactly. I'll tell
you, let us give up the brook and build a sort of what-do-you-call'em
for a retreat, in one corner.” After some explanations from Hugh about
his plan, the boys finally succeeded in manufacturing something romantic
and ingenious. Two blooming oleanders in boxes were brought from Uncle
Harry's parlor, there was a hemlock tree with a rustic seat under it,
there was an evergreen arch above, there was a little rockery built with
a dozen stones from the old wall behind the barn, and there were Miss
Jane Sawyer's potted scarlet geraniums set in among them, all surmounted
by two banging baskets and a bird-cage. With nothing save an airtight
stove to warm it into life (the ugliness of the stove quite hidden by
screens of green boughs), the cold, bare hall was magically changed
into a green forest, vocal with singing birds and radiant with blooming
flowers.
The boys swung their hats in irrepressible glee.
“Won't this be a surprise to the people, though! Won't they think of the
desert blooming as the rose!” cried Hugh.
“I fancy it won't astonish Uncle Harry and Grandmother much,” answered
Jack, dryly, “inasmuch as we've nearly borrowed them out of house and
home during the operation. Old Mrs. Winship said when I took her hammer,
hatchet, chopping-tray, house plants, and screw-driver, that perhaps she
had better go over to Mrs. Carter's and board. The girls will be fairly
stunned, though. Just imagine Bell's eyes! I told them we'd see to
sweeping and heating the hall, but they don't expect any decorations.
Well, I'm off. Lock the door, Geoff, and guard it like a dragon; we meet
at eleven to-morrow morning, do we? Be on hand, sharp, and let us all go
in and view the scene together. I wouldn't for worlds miss hearing and
seeing the girls.”
Jack and Hugh started for home, and Geoff went downstairs to run a
gauntlet of questioning from Jo Fenton, who was present in Grandmother
Winship's kitchen on one of the borrowing tours of the day, and
extremely anxious to find out why so much mysterious hammering was going
on.
While these preparations were in progress, the six juvenile housekeepers
were undergoing abject suffering in their cookery for the picnic. It had
been a day of disasters from beginning to end--the first really mournful
one in their experience.
It commenced bright and early, too; in fact, was all ready for them
before they awoke in the morning, and the coal fire began it, for it
went out in the night. Everybody knows what it is to build a fire in a
large coal stove; it was Jo's turn as stoker and tirewoman, and I regret
to say that this circumstance made her a little cross, in fact, audibly
so.
After much searching for kindling-wood, however, much chattering of
teeth, for the thermometer was below zero, much vicious banging of stove
doors, and clattering of hods and shovels, that trouble was overcome.
But, dear me! it was only the first drop of a pouring rain of accidents,
and at last the girls accepted it as a fatal shower which must fall
before the weather would clear, and thus resigned themselves to the
inevitable.
The breakfast was as bad as a breakfast knew how to be. The girls were
all cooks to-day in the exciting preparation for the picnic, for they
wanted to take especially tempting dainties in order that they might
astonish more experienced providers. Patty scorched the milk toast;
Edith, that most precise and careful of all little women under the
sun, broke a platter and burned her fingers; Lilia browned a delicious
omelet, and waved the spider triumphantly in the air, astonished at her
own success, when, alas, the smooth little circlet slipped illnaturedly
into the coal hod. Lilia stood still in horror and dismay, while Bell
fished it hastily out, looking very crumpled, sooty, shrunken, and
generally penitent, if an omelet can assume that expression. She slapped
it on the table severely, and said, with a little choke and tear in her
voice:
“The last of the eggs went into that omelet, and it is going to he
rinsed, and fried over, and eaten. There isn't another thing in the
house for breakfast. There is no bread; Alice put cream-of-tartar into
the buckwheats, instead of saleratus, and measured it with a tablespoon
besides; Miss Miranda's cat upset the milk can; the potatoes are frozen;
and I am ashamed to borrow anything more of Grandmother.”
“Never,” cried Alice, with much determination. “Sooner eat omelet and
coal hod, too! Never mind the breakfast! there are always apples. What
shall we take to the picnic? We can suggest luncheon at high noon, and
no one will suspect we haven't breakfasted.”
“Let's make mince pies,” cried Jo, animatedly, from her seat on the
wood-box.
“Goose,” answered Bell, with a sarcastic smile. “There's plenty of time
to make mince-meat, of course!”
“At any rate, we must have jelly-cake,” said Lilia, with decision, while
dishing up the injured omelet for the second time. “We had better carry
the delicacies, for Mrs. Pennell and the boys will be sure to bring
bread and meat and common things.”
“Oh, tarts, tarts!” exclaimed Edith, in an ecstacy of reminiscence. “I
haven't had tarts for a perfect age! Do you think we could manage them?”
“They must be easy enough,” answered Patty, with calm authority. “Cut a
hole out of the middle of each round thing, then till it up with jelly
and bake it; that's simple.”
[Illustration: 0093]
“Glad you think so,” responded Edith, with an air of deep melancholy and
cynicism, as she prepared to wash the cooking dishes and found an empty
dish-water pot. “I should think the jelly would grow hard and crusty
before the tarts baked, but I suppose it's all right. Everything we
touch to-day is sure to fail.”
“Oh, how much better if you said, 'I'll try, I'll try, I'll try,'” sang
Bell, in a spasm of gayety.
“Oh, how much sadder you will feel when you've tried, by and by,”
retorted Edith. “Is there anything difficult about pastry, I wonder?
Look in the cookbook. Does it have to be soaked over night like ham, or
hung for two weeks like game, or put away in a stone jar like
fruit-cake, or 'braised' or 'trussed' or 'larded' or anything?”
“No,” said Patty, looking up from the 'Bride's Manual,' “but it has to
be pounded on a marble slab with a glass rolling-pin.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” said Bell, “Tarts are nothing but pie-crust. This
village is situated in the very middle of what is called the New England
Pie Belt, and the glass rolling-pin and the marble slab have never been
seen by the oldest or youngest inhabitant. I know that bride. When she
makes pastry you can see her diamond engagement ring flash as she
dips her turquoise scoop into her ruby flour-barrel. Look up soft
gingerbread, Patty.”
“Four cups best New Orleans molasses--”
“The molasses is out,” said Jo; “find jelly-cake.”
“Jelly all gone,” said Bell; “where, I can't think, for there were
seventeen tumblers.”
“The boys are awfully fond of it with bread,” said Alice, reminiscently.
“How about doughnuts?”
“All right,” Bell answered, “of course you'll go to the store for more
eggs and a pail of lard. We're out of molasses, eggs, lard, ginger,
jelly, patience, and luck.”
Over an hour was spent in futile excursions through the cookery books,
vain rummagings of the pantry and larder, frequent trips to the country
store, and nothing was a triumphant success. Things that should have
been thin were fat and puffy; those that should have risen high and
light as air were flat and soggy; pots, pans, bowls, were heaped on one
another in the sink until at one o'clock Alice Forsaith went to bed
with a headache, leaving the kitchen in a state of general confusion
and uproar. I cannot bear to tell you all the sorry incidents of that
dreadful day, but Bell had shared in the blunders with the rest. She had
gone to the store-room for citron, and had stumbled on a jar of
frozen “something” very like mince-meat. This, indeed, was a precious
discovery! She flew back to the kitchen, crying:
“Hurrah! We'll have the pies after all, girls! Mother has left a pot
of mince-meat in the pantry. It's frozen, but it will be all right. You
trust to me. I've made pies before, and these shall not be a failure.”
The spider was heated, and enough meat for three pies put in to thaw. It
thawed, naturally, the fire being extremely hot, and it presently became
very thin and curious in its appearance.
“It looks like thick soup with pieces of chopped apple in it,” said
Lilia to Bell, who was patting down a very tough, substantial bottom
crust on a pie plate.
“We-l-l, it does!” owned the head cook, frankly; “but I suppose it will
boil down or thicken up in baking. I don't like to taste it, somehow.”
“Very natural,” said Lilia, dryly. “It doesn't look 'tasty;' and, to
tell the truth, it does not look at all as I've been brought up to
imagine mince-meat ought to look.”
“I can't be responsible for your 'bringing up,' Lill. Please pour it in,
and I'll hold the plate.”
The mixture trickled in; Bell put a very lumpy, spotted covering of
dough over it, slashed a bold original design in the middle for a
ventilator, and deposited the first pie in the oven with a sigh of
relief.
Just at this happy moment, Betty Bean, Mrs. Winship's maid-of-all-work,
walked in with a can of kerosene.
“Don't you think that's funny looking mince-meat, Betty?” asked Patty,
pointing to the frying-pan.
Betty the wise looked at it one moment, and then said, with youthful
certainty and disdain: “'Tain't no more mince-meat than a cat's foot.”
This was decisive, and the utterance fell like a thunder-bolt upon the
kitchen-maids.
“Gracious,” cried Bell, dropping her good English and her rolling-pin
at the same time. “What do you mean? It looked exactly like it before it
melted. What is it, then?”
“Suet,” answered cruel Betty Bean. “Your ma chopped it and done it up
in molasses for her suet plum puddins this winter. It's thick when it's
cold; and when it was froze, maybe it did look like pie-meat with a good
deal of apple in it; but it ain't no such thing.”
This was too much. If I am to relate truly the adventures of this
half-dozen suffering little maidens, I must tell you that Bell entirely
lost her sunny temper for a moment; caught up the unoffending spider
filled with molasses and floating bits of suet; carried it steadily and
swiftly to the back-door, hurled it into a snow-bank; slammed the door,
and sat down on a flour-firkin, burying her face in the very dingy
roller-towel. The girls stopped laughing.
“Never mind, Bluebell,” cooed Patty, sympathetically, smoothing her
hostess's curly hair with a very doughnutty hand, and trying to wipe her
flushed cheeks with an apron redolent of hot fat. “You can use the
rest of the pie-crust for tarts, and my doughnuts are swelling up
be-yoo-ti-ful-ly!”
Bell withdrew the towel from her merry, tearful eyes, and said with
savage emphasis:
“If any of you dare tell this at the picnic to-morrow, or let Uncle
Harry or the boys know about it, I'll--I don't know what I'll do,”
finished she, weakly.
“That's a fearful threat,” laughed Jo,--“'The King of France and fifty
thousand men plucked forth their swords! and put them up again.'”
And so this cloud passed over, and another and yet another with
comforting gleams of sunshine between, till at length it was seven
o'clock in the evening before the dishes were washed and the kitchen
tidied; then six as tired young housewives stretched themselves before
the parlor fire as a bright blaze often shines upon. Bell, pale and
pretty, was curled upon the sofa, with her eyes closed. The other girls
were lounging in different attitudes of dejection, all with from one to
three burned fingers enveloped in cloths. The results of the day's labor
were painfully meager,--a colander full of doughnuts, some currant buns,
molasses ginger-bread, and a loaf of tolerably light fruit cake. Out in
the kitchen closet lay a melancholy pile of failure,--Alice's pop-overs,
which had refused to pop; Patty's tarts, rocky and tough; and a bride's
cake that would have made any newly married couple feel as if they were
at the funeral of their own stomachs. The girls had flown too high in
their journey through the cook book. Bell and Jo could really make plain
things very nicely, and were considered remarkable caterers by their
admiring family of school-mates; but the dainties they had attempted
were entirely beyond their powers; hence the pile of wasted goodies in
the closet.
“Oh, dear,” sighed Lilia. “Nobody has spoken a word for an age, and I
don't wonder, if everybody is as tired as I. Shall we ever be rested
enough to go to-morrow?”
“I was thinking,” said Edith, dreamily, “that we have only seven more
days to stay. If they were all to be as horrible as this, I shouldn't
care very much; but we have had such fun, I dread to break up
housekeeping. The chief trouble with to-day was that we did no planning
yesterday. We never looked into the store-room nor bought anything in
advance nor settled what we should cook.”
“Well,” said Bell, waking up a little, “we will crowd everything
possible into the last week and make it a real carnival time. To-morrow
is Saturday and the picnic; on Monday or Tuesday we'll have some sort
of a 'pow-wow,' as Uncle Harry says, for the boys, in return for their
invitation, and then we'll think of something perfectly grand and
stupendous for Friday, our last day of fun. It will take from that
until Monday to get the house into something like order for my mother's
return. (This with a remorseful recollection of the terrible back
bed-room, where everything imaginable had been 'dumped' for a week
past.)
“I haven't finished trimming our shade hats,” called Alice, faintly,
from the distance. “I will do it in the morning while you are packing
the luncheon. Whatever we do let us unpack our baskets privately and try
to mix in our food with Mrs. Carter's or Mrs. Winship's, so that nobody
will know which is which.”
The girls had tried to devise something jaunty, picturesque, and summery
for a picnic costume; but the weather being too cold for a change of
dress, they had only bought broad straw hats at the country store,--hats
that farmers wore in haying time, with high crowns and wide brims. They
had turned up one side of them coquettishly, and adorned it with
funny silhouettes made of black paper, descriptive of their various
adventures. Lilia's, for instance, had a huge ink bottle and sponge;
Bell's a mammoth pie and frying-pan. Around the crowns they had tied
colored scarfs of ribbon or gauze, interwoven with bunches of dried
grasses, oats, and everlastings.
Half-past eight found them all sleep-in as soundly as dormice; and the
next morning with the recuperative power that youth brings, they awoke
entirely refreshed and ready for the fray.
The picnic was a glorious success. It was a clear, bright day, and not
very cold; so that with a good fire they were able to have a couple of
windows open, and to feel more as if they were out in the fresh air. The
surprise and delight of the girls knew no bounds when they were ushered
into their novel picnic ground, and even the older people avowed that
they had never seen such a miracle of ingenuity. The scene was as pretty
a one as can be imagined, though the young people little knew how
lovely a picture they helped to make in the midst of their pastoral
surroundings. Six charming faces they were, happy with girlish joy,
sweet and bright from loving hearts, and pure, innocent, earnest living.
Bell was radiant, issuing orders for the spread of the feast, flying
here and there, laughing over a stuffed snake under a bush (Geoff's
device), and talking merry nonsense with Hugh, her arch eyes shining
with mischief under her great straw hat.
Marcus Aurelius, the parrot, talked, and the canaries sang as if this
were the last opportunity any of them ever expected to have; while
the embroidered butterflies and stuffed birds fluttered and swayed and
danced on the quivering tree-twigs beneath them almost as if they were
alive.
The table-cloth was spread on the floor, in real picnic fashion, for
the boys would allow neither tables nor chairs, and the lunch was
simply delectable. Mrs. Win-ship, Mrs. Brayton, and Mrs. Pennell, with
affectionate forethought, had brought everything that schoolgirls and
boys particularly affect--jelly-cake, tarts, and hosts of other goodies.
How the girls remembered their closetful of “attempts” at home; how they
roguishly exchanged glances, yet never disclosed their failures; how
they discoursed learnedly on baking-powder versus saleratus, raw potato
versus boiled potato yeast; and with what dignity and assurance
they discussed questions of household economy, and interlarded their
conversation with quotations from the “Young Housekeeper's Friend,” and
the “Bride's Manual.”
In the afternoon they played all sorts of games,--some quiet, more not
at all so,--until at five o'clock, nearly dark in these short days,
they left their make-believe forest and trudged home through the snow,
baskets under their arms, declaring it a mistaken idea that picnics
should be confined to summer.
“What a gl-orious time we've had!” exclaimed Jo, as they busied
themselves about the home dining-room. “Yesterday seems like a horrible
nightmare, or, at least, it would if it hadn't happened in the daytime,
and if we hadn't the pantry to remind us of the truth. The things we
carried were not so v-e-r-y bad, after all! I was really proud of the
buns, and Patty's doughnuts were as 'swelled up' as Mrs. Drayton's.”
“And a great deal yellower and spotted-er,” quoth Edith, in a sly aside.
“Well,” admitted Patty, ruefully, “there certainly was quite enough
saleratus in them; but I think it very unbecoming in the maker of the
bride's-cake to say anything about other people's mistakes! Bride's
cake, indeed!” she finished with a scornful smile.
“True!” said Edith, much crushed by this heartless allusion to what had
been the most thorough and expensive failure of the day; “I can't deny
it. Proceed with your sarcasm.”
“This house 'looks as if it was going to ride out'! as Miss Miranda
says,” exclaimed Alice. “Do let us try to straighten it before Sunday!
The closets are all in snarls, the kitchen's in a mess, and the less
said about the back bedroom the better.”
Accordingly, inspired by Alice's enthusiasm, they began to work and to
improve the hours like a whole hiveful of busy bees. They put on big
aprons and washed pans and pots that had been evaded for two days, made
fish-balls for breakfast, dusted, scrubbed, washed, mended, darned, and
otherwise reduced the house to that especial and delicious kind of
order which is likened unto apple-pie. And thus one week of the joys and
trials of this merry half-a-dozen housekeepers was over and gone.