Chapter XII: Merrily Putting Off Sorrow

“You’re to come home with Poppy and me, Isa and Prue; Motherkins said so,” said Mark. “She was going to call up your mothers, and ask them to let you stay to supper. She said we might get it ourselves. We’re going to have ice cream.”

“Whatever in this world _for_?” demanded Prue. “Funny time to have a party when we’re too miserable to talk!”

“Motherkins said we must have all the good times, and just as good times, as we can while we--before we--go away.” Mark’s voice trembled over the end of this sentence. “And of course it isn’t a party; just ourselves puttering into things in the kitchen, the way we always do.”

“And of course we’ll love it!” Isabel came to Mark’s rescue. “Poppy, try not to show how you feel about Hurrah, and don’t cry before Motherkins.”

“H’uh! Don’t you s’pose she knows about Hurrah and me? I’ll bet she hates to leave him her ownself!” said Poppy with a scornful sniff. “I b’lieve you’n Prue’s full as likely to cry as me.”

“Well, we’ll all do our very best to be jolly,” said Isabel.

“I’m saddest now in my stomach; it aches, I cried so hard,” said Poppy, and the other three could not help laughing, which proved to be a helpful start toward cheerfulness.

Bunkie, blissfully ignorant of the misfortune that had befallen his friends, ran back and forth ahead of them as the children started for Hawthorne House. Pincushion came to meet them down the grass at the rear of the house, talking, as she always did, with every step, softly cooing: “M-m-m-m,” at the sight of Bunkie whom the little cat loved with as great fervor as when she was a kitten.

“Oh, and there are Bunkie and Cushla! They love each other so; how will they stand part----”

“Prue!” Isabel interrupted Prue’s lament. “Now, don’t begin that! Aren’t we forgetting every single minute, with all our might, so why do you want to remind us?”

There was no chance to be dismal in meeting Motherkins. She stood at the top of the steps waving her hands girlishly. Behind her stood the grim person who had come to Hawthorne House to do the housework, and was so exceedingly gloomy that she made everybody else cheerful. Flossie Doolittle was her name, not one bit suitable, for she was a great worker, and nothing could have been less like her than “Flossie.” But the trifling name, worn by the solemn and rather elderly woman, was so funny that the children never got used to it.

“Ice cream, my guests!” called Motherkins the moment the children were within reach of her voice. “My son Gilbert, your Mr. Daddé, has brought us up a quantity of ice, and I have cream so heavy it will hold up a spoon! Flossie is going to let you do anything that you please in her kitchen, and not interfere, unless you ask her help. And I am going to get out the plates you like best--those thin French ones with the bronze-gold border--and we shall have one of those nicest parties, the kind that you don’t plan, and which are not celebrating anything, but having a good time. What will each of you make for supper? And what sort of cream shall it be? We’ll have to take a vote on that.”

“Well,” said Prue with a vivid remembrance of an attempt she had once made to get up a half dozen delicacies, and what a failure it had been, “I say don’t try a whole lot of things. Don’t each of us make something different, but let’s make about two things, and work together. We don’t need such a lot--I think ice cream is enough for supper.”

“Prudence always proves true to her name!” laughed Motherkins. “That’s a sensible sugges--what shall it be?”

“I can frazzle--I mean frizzle dried beef nice,” said Prue, and they all laughed.

“I can do potatoes in the oven, sliced and baked in milk,” said Isabel. “We could use some of the milk you skimmed for the ice cream, Motherkins.”

“Economical Isa! And that sort of potatoes is delicious. But not everything done in milk, please! Prue, what else besides frizzled beef could you offer us?”

“I’ll make cake,” said Prue, and they saw that she did not quite enjoy having her beef laughed at.

“Oh, Motherkins, there’s cold chicken left! If only you’d let me make those croquet ball things--you showed me how you did it; I’ll bet I could!”

Poppy spoke as if she had long yearned to do this.

“Croquettes, funny Poppy!” cried Motherkins. “But they are balls, it’s true. I don’t believe you could ever go through two wickets at a time with one! Croquettes be it; isn’t that enough?”

“Too much,” said Prue decidedly. “What sort of cream?”

“Let’s make ourselves into a convention; daddy told me how they nominate the president. I nominate chocolate ice cream. Anybody else want my candidate?” asked Mark.

“I do,” said Poppy.

“I don’t; I want brown sugar caramel cream,” said Isabel.

“O-o-oh, so do I!” cried Prue, smacking her lips.

“Convention is evenly divided--unless you’ll vote, Motherkins-wee?” said Mark.

Mrs. Hawthorne shook her head decidedly. “All your choice, this supper,” she said.

“Then one of you must vote with us, or one of us with you,” said Mark. “I don’t care; I’ll say caramel----”

“No, listen!” interrupted Isa. “I say make plain cream, without any flavor, or else the weeniest little drop of vanilla in it--and make a chocolate sauce to pour over it. We all like that.”

“That’s the dark horse in the convention!” cried Mark. “When they don’t get enough votes for one candidate they put up a bran new one nobody thought of, and get together on him. We’ll have the chocolate sauce candidate, the dark horse Senator Isabel nominated!”

“It _is_ dark; chocolate sauce always is,” observed literal-minded Prue thoughtfully.

“I suppose I may’s well get out pans for you young ones; young ones always uses a great many they no need to,” said Flossie mournfully. “I think you’ve got comp’ny to your party unexpected. There’s a wagon drivin’ in, and if I’m not much mistook it’s the bottle man again that come here not so long back, and is a friend o’ Poppy’s, who ought to be called by her name and not such a no-name ’tall as Poppy, even though her name is Gladys, which is by far too silly and ornamental for the Meiggs part of her name.”

“Well, you should worry!” said Poppy indignantly. “Oh, Motherkins, it is Mr. Thomas Burke, 906 North Street, Hertonsburg, and his wife’s along!”

Poppy had run to the window in the pantry from which she could see the barn and her friends alighting from the wagon, which they were leaving in the barnyard. She ran back with her tidings, her face radiant; she always gave Mr. Burke’s address when she spoke of him as if it were part of his name.

“I’m glad that they’ve come,” said Motherkins heartily. “And the moral of this, as the Duchess would say, is always to have a party ready in case unexpected guests arrive.”

She went out to welcome and bring in the Burkes, and the children looked after her admiringly. Sweet and calm, ready to give the children a good time and to take part in it, who that had not known would have guessed that brave little Motherkins had received a hard blow and bore a heavy heart in her breast?

“I hope I shall grow up like her, just exactly like my mother and her!” said Isabel, and it was not necessary to say why, for Prue echoed:

“So do I hope I shall!”

Poppy had run after Motherkins and now returned leading a large, sunny looking woman, with a broad hat trimmed with cornflowers, much askew from riding in the jolting wagon, crowning disordered hair.

“Yes,” she said, continuing something she had been telling Motherkins, who followed her into the room, “my man had to be over beyond here to-morrow, so he came around this way to-day to tell your husband--I mean your son, ma’am--something about that little man he met one day, as he was telling you the time he was here previous. It seems that little hunchback man had something on his mind to do with you folks. He was to the doctor’s over to Hertonsburg and was hinting at it. When Poppy wrote us--’twasn’t just so easy to read, but we made out you was in trouble and a-going to lose your fine home, and so we kinder put two and two together, as the saying is, and wondered if the little man was mixed up with your trouble some way.”

“Poppy wrote you about it?” Motherkins looked at Poppy with surprise, and a little disapproval.

“I told Mis’ Burke that most likely you was goin’ to get poor again, and I asked her, if you did, could they take me into the bottle business and let me work for ’em? And I said I’d let ’em use my horse--Hurrah, I mean--and I’d tag along behind on the buckboard, working for ’em, if they’d take me into business,” said Poppy with great dignity.

Mrs. Burke winked at Motherkins mysteriously, though a child less bright than Poppy could not have missed that wink, nor failed to see that it meant admiration of herself.

“She did that, ma’am,” said Mrs. Burke. “We’d be proud to travel like a circus, as Tom said, with Poppy following the big wagon, but we didn’t want to make a bargain by mail, not letting you in on it.”

“We’re having a kind of a party,” said Poppy, changing an unpleasant for a pleasant subject, “and we’d ought to be fixing things.”

“Leave me help!” said Mrs. Burke, instantly unbuttoning and rolling up her sleeves. “I know how to do most anything, if I do say it, and I ain’t fond of not doin’ most anything, all the time--I hate loafin’!”

So in a short time the kitchen hummed with industry. Isabel was slicing potatoes; Poppy was shredding chicken from its bones; Prue was beating eggs, and Mark, pinned up in a roller towel, was scraping chocolate for the sauce, a dark streak on one cheek that suggested--but it was not sweetened chocolate, so perhaps he had not been taking toll-tastes of his material.

When the table was set--Flossie had attended to that at a hint from Motherkins--Isabel brought in her potatoes in their casserole, trying not to look proud of the wrinkled brownness of their milky top. But when they were served she tried--less successfully--not to look mortified; the slices of potatoes were hard; the milk had boiled and browned, but the potatoes were raw.

Poppy’s croquettes fell apart when they were taken out of the boiling fat, and she had not been sure that she had salted them, so she had put in a generous amount, which, as it was the second salting, made the croquettes something to taste once, choke over and forever after to avoid.

“Oh, well, who wants anything but ice cream and cake when it’s around, anyway?” asked Poppy, winking back her tears of mortification.

“Got a whopping freezerful!” cried Mark. “I thought of a way to make it three kinds, too! First, plain--and it’s good that way; it’s rich. Then with chocolate sauce over it. Then with strawberry jam over it. Flossie said we might do that, and it’s great.”

“Guessing, or knowledge, Mark?” hinted his father.

Mark laughed. “Knowledge; I tasted it,” he owned up.

Mark served the cream. Eight saucers were brought in by him heaped and running over.

“Oh, Mark, dear, where _are_ we to put the sauce? I am sure there is a pint of ice cream in this saucer! Poppy, dear, please hand me another plate to put half of this on,” cried Motherkins.

“Oh, Motherkins, the freezer is full and it holds two gallons!” remonstrated Mark. “Don’t take any off; we’ve as much again all around.”

“Sure you can pack it!” said Mr. Burke, speaking for the first time.

“Thank you, Mr. Burke; this boy cares more for the safety of the cream than for his poor little grandmother!” said Motherkins pathetically.

“Eat a crater in the top first, and then put on sauce to fill it,” advised Prue, rapidly taking helpings of cream from the top of her piled-up plate, carefully keeping the sides alike by turning the spoon around like a drill. “I think my cake is all right.”

“Your cake is delicious, Prue,” said Mr. Hawthorne, though everybody else laughed at Prue. “And the ice cream is too good for it to grieve us if we can’t find room for sauce over it. This is a nice party!”

“Oh, we have nice parties! We have nice parties!” Isabel’s voice quavered as she said this and she bent forward and scooped out the middle of her cream to hide her emotion, scooping so hard that the melted cream at the base of the cone overflowed the edge of her plate without her seeing it.

For a moment there was a dangerous tendency on the part of the four children to tears; it was easy to understand that Isabel was thinking of the day, now drawing near, when there would be no more of these impromptu good times.

“Well!” It was Mr. Burke who saved the day by speaking as if he were unconscious of this danger. “What I would be sayin’ is that if Mrs. Hawthorne would trust me an’ my wife, an’ well she may, for we’d look after Poppy our best an’ Mrs. Burke’s best is as good as best comes, we’d take Poppy along to-morrow for a trip. We’ll be coming this way again, back on our tracks, three days from now, an’ Poppy might harness up her Arabian race horse an’ follow along on the buckboard, an’ try how she’d like the business. What do you say to it?”

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes!” Poppy started up, clapping her hands. Then she stopped, and fell back in her chair with a sudden gust of tears. “Oh, no! Oh, no; I couldn’t! I couldn’t leave Isabel for so long, not now--nor Prue,” she added, but plainly as an afterthought.

“Well, if that’s the only objection, take them along,” suggested Mr. Burke. “An’ Mark, too. Even if you ain’t parting from him, like the girls here, it’ll do no harm to have him with us. If it’s too big a pull for Hurrah’s well-known delicacy of constitution, there’s room in the wagon for the lot of ye, or any one of ye, to ride amongst me an’ Mrs. Tommy Burke an’ the bottles.”

“And sell our garden truck, the way we planned!” cried Prue. “It’s ready this minute! We’ve got to sell it, because that’s why we raised it, and we said we would, even if it is too late to save up money enough for this house.”

“Might we, Mrs. Hawthorne? If you said Poppy and Mark could go, I know mother would think I could. I’d love it.” Isabel leaned over the table, her eyes shining, her lips parted by her quick breath.

“I don’t see any objections. It would be great sport for you,” said Motherkins.

“You’re such a darling!” cried Prue. “You always see why things are nice, just as we do. Hurry up with that cream, Mark. I’ve got to go up to the Club Room for the scales.”

“What for?” asked Mark, filling the crater he had made in the middle of his ice cream with a great spoonful of chocolate syrup. “My, but it’s luscious! I will not hurry!”

“To weigh our vegetables. I left the scales up there.” Prue nearly choked herself with ice cream covered with strawberry jam; she did not mind that the others laughed. “We’ll be gypsying. We’ll sleep outdoors, shan’t we? I want to! Poppy and Isa and I will roll up in blankets and sleep on the buckboard! Mark can sleep in the wagon, or use his father’s tent that he used to have last summer. Oh, Mr. Burke, you are an angel!”

“I’ll be after getting a new sign painted: ‘T. Burke, Angel. Dealer in Glass Bottles,’” said Mr. Burke with his twinkle.

“Come with me,” said Prue to Isa, as she hastily took her last spoonful of ice cream, so large a spoonful that she clapped her hand to her cheek, for it made her teeth ache.

Isa followed her out of the door and up to the Club Room. Nobody had visited the room that day. As the little girls opened the door and rushed in, being in a great hurry to get the scales, they stopped short and looked around, then stared at each other.

The couch was pulled forward, its cover thrown off, its pillows piled up and the top one dented with the unmistakable impression of a head in it.

“Some one has slept here!” cried Prue.

“And it surely wasn’t Kathie,” added Isabel, pointing to a cigar stub and ashes and burnt matches which lay on one of the saucers of their cherished set of cups and saucers.