Chapter SEVENTEEN: Cubby Goes Visiting

Jeannette tiptoed down the staircase with bated breath, and out into the pantry, where Hannah was making butter-balls for dinner.

“We’re nearly ready to leave, Hannah,” she whispered, closing the pantry door behind her, and watching the swiftly-moving butter-paddles with interest. “Cubby is in bed for her nap, and sound asleep. Isn’t that lucky? Do let me roll a butter-ball.”

“Now, Miss Jet, you’ll get your pretty dress all greasy,” objected Hannah anxiously, eyeing the red swiss dress with its narrow black-velvet trimming, and the scarlet straw hat laden with red-and-black cherries, approvingly. “There goes a piece on your black silk sock now!”

“No, it didn’t; it went on my slipper,” returned Jeannette thankfully, “and it will rub right off the patent leather. But I guess maybe I’d better not try to do it now, ’cause after we do our shopping, we’re all going over to call on Mrs. MacAllister at White Birches, and so I mustn’t get mussed.”

“’Pears to me you’re home from school mighty early,” remarked Hannah, clearing a place for Jeannette to sit down while she waited for the others, and peeping in at the kitchen clock.

“Oh, Elizabeth and I were excused at one o’clock,” Jeannette explained happily, “’cause we’re going into town with Mother, Grandma, and Aunt Elsie, to get the materials for Elizabeth’s May-Queen dress, and the Maids-of-Honor dresses, too. Won’t it be fun? I think it was perfectly lovely that Wiggles got the most votes, and I’m so excited it seems as if I could hardly wait till May Day. I wish Marion, Alice, and Kitty could have gone with us to-day, but Miss Helen said she couldn’t excuse so many, so they asked us to get whatever we thought best. Mother and Grandma will decide. It won’t take us very long. Then we’re going to stop and call on Mrs. MacAllister on the way back, and that’s why we want to go while Cubby is asleep, ’cause she’ll cry and cry if she can’t go calling with us to see the white pony, and Mother says she’s too little.”

“Dat chile knows you-all are going, jest the same,” put in Hannah wisely, rolling the butter with experienced hands. “’Cause yesterday she came down to the kitchen and done tole Mandy that some day soon she was going over to call on dat white pony and de white dog. She’s jest plumb crazy over them.”

The pantry door opened a crack.

“She’s going to be terribly disappointed,” sighed Polly Wiggles sadly, cautiously edging through the narrow space. “I do hope she’ll take a long, long nap, ’cause if she finds us all gone when she wakes up, she’ll guess where we are right away, and be heartbroken. She heard Grandma say that Mrs. MacAllister had asked us all to come over. She’s teased and teased to go with us ever since, and, though Mother said ‘no,’ she’s been playing ‘lady-going-visiting’ ever since. Mother promised to take her over the _next_ time she went, but that didn’t seem to satisfy her a bit. I never saw her so possessed to go anywhere before, did you, Jet?”

Hannah laid down her paddles long enough to inspect Polly Wiggles from head to foot.

“You both suah looks like red robins to-day, ’pears to me,” she said, smiling broadly. “Dat white swiss o’ Miss Elizabeth’s all sprinkled ovah with red dots, and trimmed with dat narrow red-velvet ribbon, and those bobbin’ red cherries on dat scrumptious white straw hat looks good enough to eat. Ah don’t know which dress is prettiest--Ah declare Ah don’t.”

Wiggles placed one white-shod foot on the edge of Jeannette’s chair, and sprang nimbly up beside the butter-crock, despite Hannah’s ohs and ahs of protest,--where she sat swinging her red pocketbook to and fro.

“You know--,” she began, but was interrupted as the pantry door opened the third time, to admit Mrs. Eaton.

“Run along, children,” she told them, stopping to adjust the narrow red-velvet streamers on Elizabeth’s saucy hat. “Grandma and Aunt Elsie are already in the car, and we want to get off as quietly as possible. Cubby is sleeping nicely, Hannah, and if you peep in at her occasionally, it will be all right to finish your work down here first. If she wakes, let her play in the Forget-me-not room so she won’t see us when we stop at White Birches. She’ll be heartbroken if she sees us all go and she has to stay home. I wish it wasn’t Mandy’s day out, but we had to go when the children could be excused from school.”

Cubby had been suspicious all morning. She smelled excitement in the air, and had only gone to bed under strong urging, but, though the girls subdued their giggles, the closing of the car-door wakened her, and she lifted her head to listen. But she screwed her eyelids tight together and was apparently sleeping soundly when Hannah poked an inquiring head in the “Nest,” to gaze at her. Though her eyes were closed, Cubby’s mind was working busily, putting two and two together, and as soon as Hannah had departed kitchenward, up she sprang, to run from one bedroom to the other, her bare feet making no noise on the soft rugs.

“Gone,” said she, her lips quivering. “Gone,--to call on the white pony,--and they didn’t take me.” Two large tears brimmed in the big eyes and slid slowly down the rosy cheeks, for the disappointment was keen.

“That boy’s muvver,” she continued, meaning Mrs. MacAllister, “told my own Mayma to bring all the gur-rls over to see her. She didn’t say, ‘Bring Jet and Wiggles and leave Cubby home.’ No, indeed, she said ‘_all_,’ and ‘all’ means me, too.”

A quick rummaging through her sisters’ closet revealed still another fact,--their new swiss dresses and pretty cherry-trimmed hats were gone. Her tears changed to anger.

“They’ve gone all dessed up in their bestest desses and wed cherry hats,” said she, with curling lip and flashing eyes, “and left me home all by self--in a nightgown. Guess I’ll dess up and go call on the pony, too, before they get there.”

Peeping out of the window in the Daisy room, she spied the white collie strolling across the green lawn opposite, and the sight rekindled her determination.

“Maybe that boy’s muvver thinks I’m an itty bitty baby ’bout so long,” she fumed, measuring off a scant six inches with her hands. “Maybe she thinks I wear long desses and sleep in a crib. I’ll show her I’m just as big a gur-rl as Jet and Wiggles, ’cause I sleep in a real bed, and I know how to go a-calling, too. All you have to do is to take a ticket and leave it at the door, and then they will let you go in. Maybe Jet and Wiggles didn’t ’member to take tickets.”

That idea was a pleasing one. In her mind’s eye she saw Jet and Polly Wiggles, all dressed up in their dainty frocks, appearing at the door of White Birches without calling-cards,--or tickets, as she called them,--and being waved away, while she herself presented the maid with a magic bit of pasteboard, and in a grown-up manner walked in under her sisters’ astonished stares.

But what should she wear? Her own frocks were discarded after one quick look,--they were too plainly little-girl dresses. She didn’t have a red swiss and a cherry hat in which to look grown up,--oh, no, indeed. She didn’t have anything but fine white dresses,--just like a baby,--but she’d show them.

After repeated visits to Grandma’s and Aunt Elsie’s closets, she decided upon a jade-green silk petticoat of her grandmother’s, which swept the floor when put over her nightdress, and a beaded orange overblouse of her mother’s that fell nearly down to her knees. A dainty rose-pink breakfast-jacket of Aunt Elsie’s, that she had long admired, went on over the orange waist, which showed several inches beneath; “In case I should be cold,” she murmured contentedly, although the day was extremely warm. Aunt Elsie’s best gold-brocade evening slippers were put on next, over her own red bedroom slippers. As even then they were far too large, she tied them over each instep with Polly Wiggles’ pink hair-ribbons, and then started her search for a hat.

She was sure that the others had gone shopping to buy the dress-materials, and she knew that she only had a short time, so she worked feverishly, looking in boxes and on closet-shelves, and pulling things out till the rooms were in a jumble. A few weeks before Grandma Carr had purchased a purple toque covered with violets, and Cubby had longed ever since to try it on her own curly head. Now was her opportunity,--and then, too, it was a very grown-up-looking hat. At last she spied it on Grandma’s top shelf, and, pulling a stool to the closet, up she clambered, dragging down a mink choker as well, that she pounced upon with glee.

The toque was large,--so large that it completely covered her head and fell to her chin, disconcerting her for a minute; but Cubby was ingenious.

“’Spect it’s ’cause I haven’t long hair pinned up top,” she mused, pondering deeply. A bright idea popped into her mind. Aunt Elsie had been in an “Old Folks Concert” a short time before, and Cubby had seen her dressed in an old-fashioned frock, with white hair piled high on top of her head. “The white hair isn’t my own,” Aunt Elsie had explained, laughing at her little niece’s look of horror at seeing Auntie “grown old” so suddenly. “It’s false white hair that I bought at the store, and pinned on. All my own hair is underneath.”

Into Aunt Elsie’s room she scurried, and, after ransacking the bureau-drawers, at last she found the white switch and puffs tucked away in a big box where they had been put to stay until used again for another masquerade. Over her own mop of gold curls went the long switch, pinned on with dozens of Mother’s bronze hairpins. When the large puffs were added, the effect was most impressive,--to Cubby’s idea of thinking,--though slightly marred by the short golden curls that would peep out over her ears.

The violet toque stayed in place with the white hair to pad it up, and, pulling on a new pair of white kid gloves that she had found in her search, she hurried over to the cheval-glass to view the effect, adding Aunt Elsie’s coral beads and long ear-rings to match, although she had a struggle screwing the ear-rings in her ears.

“No one would take me for an itty gur-rl now,” she purred contentedly, spilling half a bottle of her mother’s best perfume over her dress and shaking the powder-box violently, “I looks just like a Mayma.”

Grandmother Carr would not have felt flattered at the comparison. She never wore ear-rings herself, but to Cubby they were the last touch required toward completing her costume, and she gazed at her reflection approvingly.

It was at that moment that her eyes fell upon Boots, who sat looking out of the front window with what she decided was a lonesome expression, but which was really sleepiness.

“Poor Boots,” she cooed sweetly, “did they leave you home, too? Would you like to go a-visiting to call on the booful white pony and the doggie?”

It spoke much for Boot’s disposition, as in ten minutes’ time his small mistress had attired him in a doll’s blue-gingham dress, from Polly Wiggles’ doll’s trunk, as well as a baby bonnet, four mittens on his paws, and a white lace veil.

Then, catching up a blue parasol of Jeannette’s in one hand, and the big pocketbook that Grandma used for marketing, and holding the protesting Boots tightly in the other, the wee bear stole cautiously down the front stairs, hoping against hope that she would find the coast clear and escape by the front door before Hannah spied her. She tripped and nearly fell several times, owing to the length of her dress, while her struggle in clothing Boots had rather damaged her costume, but her spirit was undaunted.

“Oh, my ticket,” she murmured distractedly, pausing in the front hall and looking back uncertainly. “I forgot to ’member it, and what shall I do?”

She knew it would take far too long to go back up-stairs, especially with the heavy and violently struggling Boots in one arm, and she was afraid to put him down for fear he would run away. Strange to say, in spite of his “lonesome” expression, Boots did not seem anxious to go calling. So it was with a thankful heart that she noticed the plate of calling cards on the hall console-table. It took but a minute to select one, with “Mrs. Clayton Campbell” engraved upon it. Of course the name meant nothing to Cubby,--she was attracted solely by the black border around it, which she greatly admired.

Then, pausing to adjust Grandpa’s shell-rimmed glasses over her mischievous brown eyes, and to fix the mink choker that added the final touch to her costume, Cubby crept out, not quite half an hour having passed since Hannah had seen her “napping” in bed.

Barely had the front door closed behind her, when Hannah opened the door from the kitchen, only to pause as the back door burst open, and Andy, the gardener, came hurrying in with a badly burned hand from a bonfire he had been making.

“Stop your groanin’ or you’ll be wakin’ Miss Evelyn,” scolded Hannah, glancing up toward the door of the “Nest,” which Cubby had thoughtfully closed behind her. “She’s havin’ a fine nap, and if you’ll set down quietly, Ah’ll fix your hand and bandage it so it will feel more easy.”

Andy sank into a chair as he was bid, and, never doubting but that her small charge was safely tucked away in bed, Hannah flew to find bandages and oil.

While teetering along unsteadily on the high French heels of her “borrowed” slippers, a ridiculous little figure crossed the road, and crept up the broad steps of the beautiful home--White Birches.