Louise was as good as her word. She was back in a very few minutes, and
in Winona's room again. She found her friend standing in the middle of
the floor, her dress exactly what it had been when she left.
"Better hurry," warned Louise. "We haven't overmuch time."
"Hurry!" said Winona despairingly. "How can I? Do you know what I've
done? I've hung away every single thin dress I own in the wardrobe,
instead of putting them in the wash. I knew there was something I'd
forgotten, and I couldn't think what it was."
"Oh, how dreadful!" said Louise. "You'll have to put on something
gorgeous, to match the boys' clothes."
"What can I do?" asked Winona sadly, and swung open the doors of her
wardrobe. There, crumpled, forlorn, dejected, hung a line of dresses
each hopelessly past wearing in its present state.
"Isn't that a nice trick for a Camp Fire Girl?" inquired Winona
scornfully. "It's the kind of thing you'd lecture a Blue Bird kindly but
firmly for doing, and make her see what a wreck she was going to make of
her whole life if she kept on."
"Never mind," said Louise soothingly. "You've had so many other things
to do, it's no wonder you couldn't remember that. Haven't you anything
but wash dresses? Where's your yellow silk voile?"
"I _did_ remember that!" said Winona with a reluctant grin. "I sent it
to the cleaner's day before yesterday. It won't be done till Saturday."
"What about your flowered dimity? Is all the freshness out of that? You
don't wear it often."
"I sent for it from camp, for one of the girls to use in the Samantha
tableaux, and the girl still has it, I suppose. She never gave it back.
I forgot to ask for it, in the hurry of getting home. There's no use
trying to think. I've thought and thought, and everything else is too
hot to wear, or soiled. There's nothing for it but a shirtwaist and
skirt."
"Anything of mine would be up to your knees, and baggy," said Louise
thoughtfully. "Wait a minute, Win, till I think."
"I'll do my hair while you're at it," said Winona.
"Why couldn't you borrow something of your mother's?" was Louise's next
thought.
"Mother wears long dresses," said Winona. "If she didn't I could--I'm
nearly her build."
"Couldn't you pin them up?"
"I declare, I believe I'll try," exclaimed Winona daringly. She ran out
of the room, while Louise went on with her own dressing, and came back
in a minute with a fresh, silk-lined black organdy over her arm.
"This is all there is for it," she said. "Mother would be willing, I
know, if she were here. She always wants me to wear her things."
"It's lovely," said Louise admiringly, as Winona's pink cheeks and blue
eyes appeared above the soft black, "but I'm afraid we'll hurt it if we
put pins in it."
"I won't pin it up, then," said Winona. "The guests will never know the
difference. I don't suppose father has mentioned my age."
"You'll look awfully old!"
"I don't care! Have you any black hair-ribbons you could let me have,
Louise? I see where I never get the honor bead for not borrowing, by the
way!"
"You won't lose it on account of my ribbons," said Louise, "because I
haven't any. But I don't believe hair-ribbons and your gown would match.
Did you know you had a train?"
"No!" said Winona joyfully. She loved "dressing up," and this was
beginning to look very much like it. "I'll do my hair up on top of my
head, and nobody'll think I'm younger than twenty!"
"Good!" said Louise, and helped. They wound the goldy-brown mass up on
the very top, and completed the effect by hunting out a pair of plain
glass eye-glasses, which Tom had brought from the ten-cent store once
long ago.
"You look twenty-five anyway!" exclaimed Louise, and Winona fitted the
glasses on her nose and assumed a severe expression to match. "Put your
hair back off your forehead--that way.... That's splendid!"
"I do look old!" said Winona, with a pleased expression. She trained up
and down the room and looked at herself in the glass. "I'll go down
now."
"I'll be there in a minute," said Louise. "Don't wait for me."
When Winona sailed down in her disguise to put the finishing touches to
the table she found that Tom was already dressed, and was standing
meekly at the head of the board. And also he had found time to decorate
it.
"How do you like it?" he asked in a tone even meeker than his attitude.
Winona looked, pulled off her glasses in order to see better, looked
again--and dropped down in a hopeless heap in the opposite chair. She
did not say anything--the situation was beyond words.
"Don't you like it?" said Tom again sweetly.
"Like it!" said Winona, beginning to giggle.
Four half-barrel hoops had been wreathed in smilax, and arched across
the table at regular intervals, one at each end and one between each two
places. In the middle of the table, completely hiding the olives, lay a
half-opened gridiron, also wound with smilax. It was all very neatly
done, for Tom was very neat-handed; but the general effect was rather
startling.
"It--why, it looks like somebody's grave!" said Winona protestingly.
Her tone was so stern that Puppums rose from beneath the table and tried
nervously to hide under the sideboard, revealing as he went a decoration
of smilax round his neck, continued in a garland down his spine,
fastened at the tail. He did not seem to like it.
"That's what it is!" said Tom complacently, as Winona pounced on the
abject dog and unwreathed him. "Here's the magazine I got it from. You
said to. All there was in this month's copy was a page of neat and
inexpensive grave decorations. I copied the handsomest one in the bunch,
'William R. Hicks; complete cost of decoration three dollars and twenty
cents.' That thing in the middle's a Gates Ajar, or the nearest I could
get to it. It got a prize, too."
"Do you suppose I want William R. Hicks's grave, or anybody's grave, on
the table when we're having a special hand-made dinner that I've spent
most of the afternoon on?" demanded his sister, laughing in spite of her
objections.
"What's the row?" asked Billy cheerfully, appearing in the door with an
armful of roses and ferns.
"I followed Win's directions about the table, and she doesn't seem to
like it," said Tom in a voice that was intended to sound injured.
"What's the gridiron for? A gentle reminder of the Cannibal Isles? We
don't really know yet that they're missionaries!" said Billy.
"Sorry you don't know a Gates Ajar when you see it," said Tom, grinning.
"I do," said Billy decidedly. "That isn't one. Here are your roses,
Winnie. You look like somebody's step-mother in all that train and
glasses. Where did you get them?"
"Winona!" called Louise, tearing downstairs, "I've just remembered that
Clay has been calling the fritters 'crullers' ever since we made them.
He'll send them in with the ice-cream if he isn't told not to."
She fled to the kitchen.
"Step-mother.... M'm," said Tom with a light of mischief in his eye; and
followed Louise.
"_Look_ at the table!" Winona implored Billy.
Billy looked, took in the whole effect, and, as Winona had done, sat
down to laugh in comfort.
"It's not so bad, after all," he said comfortingly when he was through.
"Let's take the bones out of these green wicket-things, and lay the
vines straight across the table. They'll get into the eats, likely, but
we can't stop for that. Can't you do anything with that gridiron ajar? I
should think the stuff on it would look all right around a low bowl of
roses."
"Maybe it would," said Winona with renewed courage, and set to work
stripping it while Billy took the supports from the smilax arches, and
laid it flat, with an occasional rose at intervals. They found a low,
wide bowl that, filled with roses, and wound with smilax, made an
excellent centerpiece.
Winona stepped back to view the general effect with a sigh of
satisfaction.
"Billy! I'll remember this afternoon of you to the longest day I live!"
she said.
"Billy! We want you!" called Louise from the kitchen in a smothered
voice. Winona would have gone, too, for she was sure she heard giggles,
but just at this moment Clay came in, and his inability to understand
why he shouldn't add a wide red cheese-cloth sash to his white apron
drove everything else out of her head. By the time she had argued him
out of it the others were back, suspiciously grave.
"Not here yet!" sighed Louise. "I feel as if I couldn't wait to have
them taste my stuffing! Let's go into the living-room and sing, or go
out back and play tag, or something."
"Dar dey is!" shouted Clay, running to the window.
The rest rushed, too, and looked over his woolly head.
"A big one and a little one and a middle-sized wife, like the Three
Bears," commented Winona. "They're coming in by the front way. Oh----"
That was because the fritter-sauce boiled over just as the guests were
ushered in. Both the girls forgot their manners, and ran to the kitchen
to rescue it. So only Tom and Billy were in the living-room to be
introduced.
"My wife and daughter will be here presently," said Mr. Merriam, who had
evidently forgotten that Mrs. Merriam was expected to stay away till
about nine. "Tom, will you run up and tell your mother and Winona that
our friends are here?"
But even as he spoke Winona, a little breathless, but trained,
psyche-knotted and eye-glassed, appeared in the doorway with Louise
behind her. She came in with an air of dignity which her mother could
not have bettered, and greeted her guests regally, in her excitement
forgetting to wait for an introduction.
Not so Tom.
"My step-mother, and my sister," he whispered in the ear of Mr. Driggs,
the tall minister, who promptly addressed Winona as "Mrs. Merriam."
Winona thought he said "Miss," and went on talking excitedly about
everything she could think of. Her father was deep in conversation with
Mr. Donne, the other guest, who was a classmate of his. Tom's murmured
"Mother isn't home yet--Winona's managing things----" scarcely stopped
the flood of reminiscences.
"I never heard that your father had a second wife," remarked Mrs. Driggs
to Louise, who had selected her to talk to.
"It's quite recent," said Louise sadly; and Mrs. Driggs did not ask any
more questions.
Before things got more complicated Clay announced dinner in an awestruck
voice, and fled instead of holding aside the portieres for the guests,
as he had been instructed. He had a good deal on his mind, for he could
not read very well yet, so they had had to sketch each particular thing
with a pencil, and pin the series of pictures against the wall in their
order as they were to come. The pictures of the oysters and the sweet
potatoes were very much alike, and, as Clay confided to Winona
afterward, they worried him considerably.
Winona seated her guests with the same dignity which had been hers ever
since the train had; and led the conversation in the ways it should go,
nobly assisted by Billy. It appeared Billy could talk like a grown-up
person of forty when he wanted to--which wasn't often, for Billy was a
rather silent person ordinarily. Tom and Louise were never, either of
them, troubled by shyness, and except that they seemed to laugh a little
more than the facts warranted they were just as usual.
Every course, from old Mrs. Johnson's stolen bouillon to the black
coffee, came on in its proper place and was eaten with enthusiasm. As
the third course came on without mishap, Winona began to relax, and by
the end of the dinner was quite at ease. Mr. Donne, beside her, was
liking his dinner so much that for quite awhile Winona did not have to
do any talking. When he did talk it was about Ladies' Aid Societies. Now
Mrs. Merriam was the President of the Ladies' Aid of her church, not to
speak of various things that she held minor offices in, and she was
quite an authority. Mr. Donne had been told this, and he thought he was
talking to Winona about something she was an authority on. Winona was
rather bewildered, for she had never attended a Ladies' Aid meeting in
her life, and like the inventor of the Purple Cow, till she was grown up
"never hoped to see one." Nevertheless she struck out valiantly, and was
getting on fairly well when Mrs. Driggs's voice struck across the
general tide of talk.
"Mrs. Merriam," she said, "I'm sorry to trouble you, but I never can eat
fish without a sprinkle of nutmeg. Could you have a little grated on
this delicious bit for me?"
"Why, yes!" said Winona cordially. "Clay----!"
"Hit ain' none, Miss Winnie," interrupted the small servant in a
distressed whisper.
"Then go borrow one at Mrs. Lee's, and hurry!" whispered Winona.
"Anything, so you only get it and have it for Mrs. Driggs's fish."
Clay looked black for a moment. Then a comprehensive grin dawned on his
face. He trotted out with Mrs. Driggs's fish, and brought it back again
a few moments later, liberally nutmegged and very much to the lady's
taste. She ate it all and was happy.
"You seem to have no difficulty in keeping discipline in your family and
among your step-children, Mrs. Merriam," said Mr. Donne, almost directly
after the nutmeg episode. "You must seem more like a sister than a
mother to these tall young people."
Winona was struck dumb with astonishment for a moment. She looked across
at Tom, who looked back at her imploringly. She could see what had
happened out in the kitchen, that time that the three others had been
there alone and giggling. But this was no time to have a scene. She
braced herself and settled her glasses more firmly, after one
reproachful look at the three culprits, whose faces were tense with
apprehension.
"Yes," she replied quietly, talking, as Tom afterwards said, like a
seraph, "They do seem like that. They are charming children, really."
Mr. Donne went on talking about it. Winona went on replying with serene
dignity. Even when he praised the cook she took it serenely, and when
the Ladies' Aid came in sight again she called to mind a visit from the
secretary at which she had been present, and quite overwhelmed Mr. Donne
with particulars.
Mrs. Driggs had been a little quiet and hard to talk to at the beginning
of the meal, but Billy--Billy the quiet, Billy the shy among his own
kind--proved to have the art of talking to grown people down to a fine
point. He not only kept his end up, but he steered nobly away from risky
questions of relationship, and other such perilous topics.
"It certainly gives you confidence to be a married woman!" thought
Winona, as she excused herself and went to see about unpacking the
ice-cream. Clay's performance so far had been perfect, but she did not
trust anybody but herself to get the cream successfully out of the
freezer, without getting salt into it.
"Where did you find that nutmeg, Clay?" she asked curiously, as they
arranged the cakes and ice-cream, and put melted chocolate in a pitcher.
"Law, Miss Winnie," said Clay, his smile nearly coiling itself around
his ears, "I done tole you hit wasn't none. I des took dis yere ole
wooden button-hook what hangs on a nail here, an' grate a li'l bit of it
off. De minister's wife she never know de diffunce."
Winona caught her breath, but this was no time to be overcome. The
dessert had to be served. They were all laughing at something Louise was
saying, when she came back. "I wonder if they would look so happy if I
told them about the nutmeg!" she couldn't help thinking, but it did not
seem a very good thing to tell anyone, just then--although it was too
good to keep always. The Camp Fire heard about it afterward.
Coffee, cheese, nuts and raisins, all appeared and disappeared, and then
Winona led her sated guests out on the porch. She felt triumphantly
virtuous. The dinner had been good straight through, the talk had gone
smoothly, and the company seemed very happy and pleased. She sat down by
Mrs. Driggs and went on talking. She was going on prosperously when Mr.
Donne's voice, from the other end of the porch, stopped Mrs. Driggs's
account of her last maid.
"How long did you say you had been married, Mrs. Merriam?" he inquired.
"Married?" echoed Winona desperately, trying to think of a way out.
She was spared giving her answer. There was a sound of footsteps and
wheels within the house, and Mrs. Merriam's wheel-chair, propelled by
Florence, appeared in the doorway.
"I got back sooner than I thought I should, Frances," said the real Mrs.
Merriam's cheerful voice. "Florence came over and told me that our
friends were here, so I had her wheel me back as soon as I'd had my
supper. We didn't get home from the ride till a little while ago, and I
couldn't get here for the meal."
Winona did not wait to hear more. There was a long open window at her
back. One spring--and all that remained to tell the tale of "young Mrs.
Merriam" was an overturned porch-chair and the distant sound of a
tearing garment. Up in her room, pulling down her hair and slipping on
her fresh middy-blouse and white skirt, Winona heard the laughter, and
knew the others were being forgiven, and the whole tale told.
"Anyway!" she said to herself as she took off her glasses, shook down
her hair, washed her hot face and prepared to walk downstairs and meet
the family. "Anyway, that couldn't have been a better dinner if I'd been
married sixteen times!"