One day at dinner (I've forgotten whether it was the first or second
day of Elise's visit, but anyhow it was before the ice was broken)
Father suggested that Tom take the new member of our family for a drive
in the afternoon with Dixie (he and Alec, could go out to the factory
by electrics), so as soon as Elise went upstairs to rest, as she always
did after dinner, I escaped to the barn, to hitch up. Alec doesn't have
much time to devote to Dixie and I gave that poor little animal such
a currying as he had never had before in his life. Then I drew up the
check two holes higher, dusted out the phaeton, and put in the best
yellow plush robe and lash whip.
Elise and Tom got back about half-past six. I was in the sitting-room
when Elise came into the house.
"Chenery has been showing me all the sights," she said. "I think Hilton
is lovely. I told Chenery we were staying too long. I'm afraid we're
late for dinner. But I'll hurry. It won't take me ten minutes to dress."
Dinner indeed! I wondered if she called the layout we had at noon
just lunch. We've always had supper at night and I hadn't intended
changing for Elise. But if she'd gone upstairs to dress for it, I'd
got to prepare something besides tea, sliced meat and toast, for all
the trouble she was taking. I flew to the kitchen. We had a can of
beef-extract, and I told Delia to make soup out of that. Then I sent
Ruth for some beefsteak, hauled down a can of peas for a vegetable, and
the sliced oranges which were already prepared would have to do for
dessert. I rushed to my room, put on my best light blue cashmere and
laid out Ruth's white muslin.
It was, after all, on the first day of Elise's visit that she took that
drive with Dixie, for _this_, I remember now, was the first evening
meal that she had had with us. An awful catastrophe took place during
the ordeal too. In the first place, having dinner at night added to
the strain the family were all under, and it may have been due to
the general atmosphere of uneasiness that made Nellie so stupid and
careless. I don't know how it happened, but when she was passing
the crackers to Elise, during the soup course, her cap got loose
somehow and fell cafluke on Elise's bread-and-butter plate. There was
an instant of dead quiet, and then Oliver, who just at that moment
happened to have his mouth full of soup, exploded like a rubber ball
with water in it. He shoved back his chair with a jerk, and coughing
and choking into his napkin, got up and left the room. Of course that
sent Malcolm off into a regular spasm, and little Ruth began to giggle
too. I could feel myself growing as red as a beet, but I didn't laugh.
No one laughed outright.
Elise was the first one to break the pause, and this is what she said:
"I've had the loveliest drive this afternoon," and then as no one
replied she went on, "Chenery took me around the reservoir. How old are
the ruins of that old mill at the upper end?"
Perhaps you think that that was a very graceful way of treating the
situation, but I didn't. We were all simply dying to laugh. We couldn't
think of old mills with that cap sticking on Elise's butter. However,
I heard Father at the other end of the table making some sort of an
answer to Elise, and all of us managed to control themselves somehow
or other. Nellie, red in the face, carried the bread-and-butter plate
away; Oliver sneaked back into his place; and I slowly began to cool
off. But of course it spoiled the meal for me.
As soon after the horrible occurrence as possible, I escaped up here to
my cupola, and Tom found me here before he went to bed. I knew he must
be disappointed at the way I was running things. I hadn't been alone
with him before, and when his head pushed up through the trap door and
he asked, "You here?" I didn't answer. I was sitting in the pitch dark
on the window-seat, but Tom must have seen my shadow for he came up
and stood beside me. He remained perfectly silent for a minute then he
said, "Aren't there a lot of stars out to-night!"
"Oh, Tom," I burst out, "I'm so sorry! Wasn't it awful? Everything's
going all wrong."
He sat down.
"It's all right, Bobbie," he said quietly. "Only I wish Elise might see
us as we really are. _Then_," he added, "you would see Elise as _she_
really is."
Tom didn't ask me how I liked her (he knew better than to do that),
and suddenly I felt sorry for my brother. I could have almost cried,
not because of the accident at dinner, not because of my failure, but
because Elise hadn't made us like her. I did so want Tom's wife to be
the same bully sort of person Tom was.
The crisis came the next day. At eleven o'clock in the morning, I found
Delia putting on her coat and hat, actually preparing to go.
"What does this mean?" I exclaimed.
"Can't you see?" she asked very saucily.
"But the washing. Have you--"
"No, I haven't, and what's more I'm not going to." She was spitting mad.
I stood there, just helpless before her.
"I have telephoned to all the intelligence offices," I said, "and
I can't get anyone to come until Saturday night. I thought, to
accommodate us, you might be willing--"
She cut me right off:
"Well, I'm not! No one accommodates me here, and I'm not used to being
treated like this. Two dinners a day and up until all hours!"
It didn't seem to me as if she had half so much to stand as I did.
I wished I could up and clear out too. I thought she was very
disagreeable to leave me in the lurch that way. But I didn't have any
words with her. I told her she might go as soon as she pleased. I hated
the sight of her standing there in the kitchen, which she had left all
spick and span, not as a kitchen should look at eleven in the morning
with half a dozen full-grown mouths to be fed at one o'clock.
I was on my way upstairs to break the news to Nellie when Elise called
to me from the sitting-room.
"Oh, Lucy," she said in her musical voice, "will there be time for me
to run over to the postoffice with some letters before lunch?"
I stalked into the sitting-room. She was sitting at the desk in her
graceful easy way, with a beautiful French hand-embroidered lingerie
waist on, that I'd be glad to own for very best. There were gold beads
about her neck, and her hair, even in the morning, was soft and fluffy
and wavy. She had her feet crossed and I took in the silk stockings and
the low dull-leather pumps.
I had a sudden desire to tear down all her beautiful appearance of ease
and grace.
"We don't have lunch at noon," I said bluntly. "We have dinner, just
dinner. We've always had dinner."
"Yes, I know," she began in her persistently pleasant way; "people do
very often, in New England."
I couldn't bear her unruffled composure.
"Oh," I said, bound to shock her, "it isn't because we're New England.
It's because we're plain, plain people. The rich families in New
England as well as anywhere, have dinner at night. But _we_," I said,
glorying in every word, "are _not_ one of the rich families. We have
doughnuts for breakfast, baked beans and brown bread Saturday nights,
and Saturday noons a boiled dinner. We love pie. We all just _love
it_. Father came from a farm in Vermont. He didn't have any money at
all when he started in. You see we're common people. And so's Tom. Tom
comes from just a common, common, _common_ family," I said, loving to
repeat the word.
She was sitting with her arm thrown carelessly over the back of the
chair, and her gaze way out of the west window. When I stopped to
see what effect my words had had she just laughed--a quiet pleased
laugh--and mixed up with it I heard her say, "Why, Chenery is the most
uncommon man I ever met." And she blushed like eighteen.
I went right on.
"We don't call him Chenery, either," I said. "We cut off all such
fringes. He's plain Tom to us. I know how the plain way we live
must impress _you_. I know you've been used to French maids, and
push-a-button for everything you want. I'm sorry for the shock you must
have got coming here. But you might as well wake up to the truth. You
see what a mess the house is in, and how Nellie won't call us Mister
and Miss, and how if she is on the third floor and she wants me she
just yells. And," I said, pointing out of the window, "there goes Delia
now. And there isn't a sign of a cook left in the house."
Elise sat up straight.
"Is she leaving without notice?" she exclaimed.
"Naturally," I laughed.
"How dreadfully unkind of her!"
"That's what I think, but Delia doesn't care if I do."
"Haven't you some one to help you out? What will you do?" Elise was
really excited.
"Do?" I replied grimly. "Oh, I'll duff in and cook myself, I suppose."
Elise put down her pen.
"I can make delicious desserts," she said. "Can't you telephone to
the family not to come home this noon? We can be ready for them by
to-night. I know how to make the best cake you ever tasted in your
life."
That's the way it came about. I took her out into the kitchen and
didn't try to cover up a thing. She could see everything exactly as it
was--smoked kitchen ceiling, uneven kitchen floor, paintless pantry
shelves. She could go to the bottom of the flour barrel if she wanted
to; and she did. Covered with an old apron and her sleeves rolled up,
she was first in the kitchen pantry looking into every cupboard, drawer
or bucket for powdered sugar; next in the fruit-closet feeling all the
paper bags, in search of a lemon; then calling to me in her musical
voice to come here and taste some dough to see if it needed anything
else; in the butler's pantry choosing just the plate she wanted for her
cookies; and actually underneath the sink, pulling out a greasy spider
for panouchie, which she was going to make out of some lumpy brown
sugar she discovered in a wooden bucket. I took grim pleasure in having
her see the worst there was. I wondered if she could stand the fact
that we didn't own an ice-cream freezer, when she suggested ice-cream
for dessert, nor possess a drop of olive oil for her mayonnaise. I
didn't care. I liked telling her the things we didn't have. When I
heard her burst into laughter in the butler's pantry, and pushing open
the swinging-door, saw her gazing at my set of rules tacked up over the
sink for Nellie, I made no explanation whatsoever. I was delighted to
have her read them. At sight of me she went off into regular peals.
Finally she gasped, with her finger on Rule 6, "She put--the ice--in a
hunk, in the big pitcher in the wash-bowl!" and the tears ran down her
cheeks.
I laughed a little then in spite of myself.
"Nellie's an old fool," I said and went back to my work.
It happened that Father and Alec had gone to Boston for the day on
business, and the last minute Tom had joined them, so the men wouldn't
be home until night anyhow. I called up the twins, just before their
fifth-hour period (I had cut school myself) and told them to get a bite
to eat at the high school lunch-counter. "I'll pay for it," I assured
them, for I knew the twins would jump at the chance of a free spread,
and as they had manual-training that afternoon, Elise and I were safe
from any interruption from the male section.
We had supper at half-past six as usual. It was very queer about that
meal. The awful strain we had all felt the same day at breakfast had
suddenly disappeared. Elise had suggested that we shouldn't tell any
one of Delia's departure, and on the outside everything was just as it
was in the morning, even to Nellie's ridiculous cap.
"These biscuits are good, Lucy," Father said suddenly, as he reached
for the plate. Father usually speaks of the food, but he hadn't done so
once since Elise had come.
"There's more in the kitchen," announced Nellie blandly.
"There's a whole panful," added Elise. "I'm awfully glad you like
them!" she exclaimed and then stopped short.
"There," I said, "I knew you'd let the cat out. Elise made them!" I
announced.
"Delia's left--" Elise hurried to say.
"And we--" I put in.
"We got supper!" she finished proudly.
"_You_ and Bobbie?" exclaimed Alec.
"Bobbie and _you_?" gasped Tom.
"Of course!" she said. "Bobbie scallopped the oysters."
"Give me some more," said Malcolm.
"Fling over the last biscuit," sang out Oliver. And in a flash Elise
picked up the little brown ball and tossed it across the fern-dish
straight as an arrow.
"Good shot!" said Oliver, catching it in both hands.
"Oh," piped up Ruthie, "make Malcolm stop. He took a cookie and it
isn't time for them."
Father just chuckled, and said, "Pretty good! pretty good!" And I tell
you it was simply glorious to be natural again!
"Don't eat too much," said Elise, "for dessert's coming and it's
awfully good."
"And chocolate layer-cake with it!" said I.
"Oh, bully!" shouted Malcolm and Oliver together.
"Say," asked Alec, "isn't this a good deal better than last night when
Nellie's cap fell into your butter?"
We all burst into sudden laughter and Nellie, who was filling the
glasses, had to set down the pitcher. She was shaking with mirth. We
laughed until it hurt; we simply roared; and suddenly Elise gasped,
when she was able to get her breath:
"Wasn't it funny? I was so frightened by you all then, I didn't know
what to say about that old cap. But now--O dear!" and suddenly she
turned to Ruth who sat next to her, put her arms around her and kissed
her. "Oh, Ruthie," she exclaimed, "isn't it _nice_ to know them all!"
And I couldn't tell whether the tears in her eyes were from laughing or
crying.
We stayed up late that night.
"Run and get my slippers," said Father to Ruth after supper; and all
the evening he lay back in his chair and watched us children while we
sang college songs to Elise's ripping accompaniment; and poked fun
at the twins because they'd just bought their first derbies. It was
eleven-thirty when we went up to bed.
"Come here a minute, Bobbie," whispered Elise to me, and I went into
the guest-room. "Do unhook the back of this dress." When I had finished
she said, "I'll be down at six-thirty" (we were going to get breakfast
too), "and don't you dare to be late! I'm going to make the omelet. You
can make the johnny-cake. Bobbie, isn't it nice Delia left?" And she
kissed _me_ as well as Ruth.
That night the boys all gathered in my room again. I wrapped up in the
down comforter, and we were just beginning to talk when Tom appeared.
"Hello," he said, smiling all over. He came in and closed the door.
"Well," he asked, "what do you think of her?" And I knew he asked us
because he so well knew what we did think. But just the same I wanted
to tell him.
I shot out my bare skinny arm at him.
"Tom," I said, "I think she's a corker!"
He first took my hand and then suddenly, very unlike the Vars, he put
both arms around me tight.
"Bobbie," he said in a kind of choked voice, "you're a little brick!"
And, my goodness, I just had to kiss Tom then!