THE VEGETABLE TEA-PARTY
School began on the Monday after Labor Day, and so Jessie came back in
time for Lois’s birthday. Lois was delighted to see her, although she
and Ellen had had such a good time together that she had not missed
Jessie half so much as she thought she should. One morning at school
Ellen said, “The vegetables are ripe in Anne’s and my garden, and
mother says I can ask you and Jessie to tea on your birthday.”
“What a lovely thing it is to have a witch kitten in the house!” Lois
exclaimed enthusiastically. “I am sure that is why the vegetables got
ripe just in time for my birthday.”
“Of course,” said Ellen.
Jessie and Lois could hardly wait for the afternoon of the party, and
when it finally came, it was such a warm, pleasant day that to their
great joy they could wear their white muslin dresses.
“Don’t you feel very old?” asked Ellen, as she greeted Lois and gave
her as many kisses as her years demanded.
“No,” Lois answered, “I suppose I ought to, but I don’t.”
She felt very young and shy when she sat down at the supper-table and
found herself placed, as the guest of honor, between Mr. Morgan and the
formidable Amyas. He had grown very tall in the last year, and seemed
much older than in the winter.
The table presented a unique appearance. In the middle was placed a
dish of melons, cut in halves, while at the corners of the centrepiece,
on which the dish stood, were small tumblers of radishes, and in front
of Mr. Morgan was a delicious-looking salad, made of cucumbers and
lettuce, with a cucumber vine encircling the dish.
“I arranged the table myself,” Ellen burst out. “Don’t you think it
looks perfectly lovely?”
Lois had hardly tasted the first mouthful of her salad when the maid
came to her with a letter.
“For me?” cried Lois. “How strange.”
“Some one must have heard you were here,” Amyas suggested.
Lois opened the envelope and found a pink ribbon inside, which just
matched the sash she wore. There were also some lines, which ran as
follows:--
Here is a ribbon for your hair,
Pray take it, dear, and place it there.
May joy and pleasure come to you,
So hopes your very loving
SUE.
Lois looked across the table at Ellen’s grown-up sister and smiled her
thanks. She was delighted with the ribbon and almost as much pleased
with the verse.
“How nice it must be to be able to write poetry!” she shyly confided to
Amyas.
“Poetry! do you call that stuff poetry?” he asked. “If I only had a
name that would rhyme with anything, I could make much better poetry
for you. I’ll make some that will rhyme with your name,” and a little
later he broke a momentary silence by repeating,--
“There was a child named Lois Page,
Who’d reached so very great an age,
She felt that dolls were surely folly,
And thus she was most melancholy;
For dolls she loved with all her heart,
And from her dolls she could not part.
Poor little girl, poor Lois Page,
’Tis sad to reach so great an age.”
“I shan’t be too old to play with dolls for a very long time,” Lois
stated.
“I am glad of that,” said Amyas, “for I have a small present. Where is
it?”--he felt in his pocket--“oh, here it is; I bought it for myself,
and when I tried it on, mother insisted it was too small for me. What
do you think, Lois?”
He gravely put on a doll’s hat, which was just the right size for
Lois’s Betty. It was made of white straw and was trimmed with a blue
ribbon, and a small feather was stuck in it.
Amyas looked so absurd with the tiny hat perched on top of his yellow
hair that every one burst out laughing.
“Don’t you think it is becoming?” Amyas inquired, with a smirk and
the conscious look in his blue eyes of an affected young lady. “Isn’t
it provoking of mother to say it is too small? If you like it for one
of your dolls, you can have it,” he said, presenting it to her with a
piece of paper on which was written the verse he had just quoted.
“Oh, thank you so much,” said Lois.
“I bought it for Amyas,” Ellen said. “I took down Jean because she is
just the size of Betty and fitted her, and I was so crazy to keep the
hat myself that Amyas gave me one too, so Jean and Betty will have hats
just alike.”
“Ellen is always fond of romancing,” said Amyas.
While Lois was still eating her salad the maid again brought her
something. This time it was a bunch of sweet peas of variegated colors,
and they were separated by a feathery green, so that they looked almost
as if they were growing on the vines. Lois plunged her nose into them
and inhaled the delicious fragrance. A card said, “For Lois, with best
wishes for a happy new year, from S. T. Morgan.”
“I can’t write verses,” said Mrs. Morgan, “but I picked these sweet
peas for you, Lois, with my own hands.”
The next gift was a tiny little box full of cotillon pencils of
different colors. There was a verse with them that ran:--
Five pencils in their narrow bed,
Yellow and green, blue, pink, and red.
Oh, may these colors symbolize
Woods and sunshine and bluest skies.
Rainbows, sunsets, red letter days,
And all life’s gay and pleasant ways.
May every year of added age
Bring added joy to Lois Page.
This was Mr. Morgan’s contribution, and it seemed to Lois the sweetest
poem of all.
There were rolls and cold chicken with the salad, and when this course
was finished, the melons were passed around with some cake with
cocoanut frosting. Lois was beginning to think she was not going to
have any more presents when the maid handed her another envelope.
Inside was a charming hand-painted paper doll made by Anne, and these
lines were written in Anne’s clear hand:--
Here is a maiden with a fan,
Dressed by your very loving
ANNE.
Lois was delighted. The poetic gift of the Morgan family filled her
with amazement.
“Anne painted in the fan on account of the rhyme,” Ellen confided to
the company. “We had such fun, all writing the verses together the
other night, only mother and Reuben can never write any. I am crazy to
have you hear my poem.”
Presently a very large bundle was placed on the table near Lois, and
she began to open it eagerly. She undid one wrapping-paper after
another, until finally she came to a moderate sized candy box.
“Candy; how nice!” said Lois, looking appreciatively at Ellen.
“I hope it will be your favorite kind,” said Ellen. “Guess what it is.”
“Chocolate peppermints,” said Lois.
She opened the cover, pulled up the paraffine paper, and underneath
were disclosed two small cucumbers. The disappointment was so great
that Lois at first could not appreciate the joke. Ellen’s verse was
written in her scrawling hand.
Dear Lois, in your birthnight slumbers,
I hope you’ll dream of my cucumbers;
Of melon, monkey, and hand-organ,
So hopes your best friend,
ELLEN MORGAN.
“Amyas bet me a doll’s hat that I couldn’t make a verse with a rhyme in
it to my own name, but I did,” said Ellen triumphantly.
There was only one more present, a small box of chocolate peppermints
from Reuben. There was no verse with it, only, “Lois from Reuben,” in
Mrs. Morgan’s attractive handwriting. Reuben was down at the other end
of the table next his mother, and Lois could not get enough courage to
thank him. She would wait until after supper. Reuben was even shyer
than she was; he was a little older than Lois, and did not have the
charm of his older brother. Nevertheless, Reuben had been very kind to
her when she had stayed with the Morgans in the winter, having taught
her to skate, and yet she never saw him now without relapsing into her
old fear of him, he was so silent and was apt to look so indifferent.
It happened that Reuben did not sit near Lois in the games they played
after supper, so she had no chance to thank him for his present. Mrs.
Morgan had said that one of the boys would see the children home, and
Lois thought if it were Reuben, she would gather courage to thank him
then, but it proved to be Mr. Morgan who walked back with them. Amyas
came out to the front door politely, but Reuben was nowhere to be seen.
Her pleasure in Reuben’s gift had been spoiled by the fact that the
inscription had been in his mother’s writing. Lois was sure he had not
bought the candy for her himself, but that Mrs. Morgan had felt it
would seem rude if each member of the family were not represented.
“Mother, we had such a lovely time!” Lois said when they reached home.
“I had seven presents and five poems,” and she proceeded to show her
treasures, and to give an animated account of the evening.
Mrs. Page was most sympathetic.
“Mother, you don’t think it is any matter if I don’t thank Reuben, do
you?” Lois asked. “I am sure it was really his mother’s present.”
“I don’t think so,” said Jessie. “I am sure it was only that he was
ashamed of his bad handwriting.”
“Well, at any rate, it is only polite to thank him,” said Mrs. Page,
entirely unaware of what a desperate task she was setting her daughter.
“Of course you ought to,” said Jessie, who would not in the least have
minded thanking a schoolful of children.
“I shall have to thank Reuben to-day,” Lois thought the next morning,
and this reflection was such a weight at her heart that the glorious
September sunshine seemed clouded. When Lois reached school and saw
Reuben come in, her heart began to beat very fast. He had a stolid
expression, and when recess came he went out immediately. As the day
wore on, it seemed more and more impossible to thank him, and when two
unhappy days had dragged themselves by, poor Lois felt that she would
gladly have foregone all the glories of her birthday, if by this means
she could escape thanking this member of the Morgan family for his gift.
“I must do it,” she thought. “Mother said so, and it is rude not to,
but it does not seem as if I could.”
The longer she put it off, the harder it was. On Saturday Lois and
Jessie went to the Morgans’ to play croquet with Anne and Ellen, and
while they were in the midst of a game Reuben appeared, asking some
question about his tennis racquet.
“Now,” thought Lois, “I must do it,” but he was off again like a flash
before the words left her lips.
On Monday morning, when she and Jessie came out at recess, she saw
Reuben and his great friends, Joel Carpenter and Jack Brown, on the
steps of the Baptist meeting-house, which was next to the school-house.
They were deep in conversation, evidently discussing some plan. Without
giving herself time to think, Lois left Jessie and went forward
quickly. The boys were standing on the third step, and so were just
above her. Clasping her hands behind her and with upturned face, she
said hurriedly,--
“Reuben, I thank you very much for my birthday present.”
Then she hastily turned her back on him and fled.
“Gee!” burst from Joel Carpenter’s lips, as Lois hurried down the
street.