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The Little Colonel's House Party by Annie Fellows Johnston

A >> Annie Fellows Johnston >> The Little Colonel\'s House Party




"And what happened?" asked the Little Colonel, eagerly.

Mrs. Brewster laughed at the remembrance, such a contagious, hearty
laugh, that her bonnet-ribbons shook.

"I never said a word about it at home, but next day, a little while
before sundown, I went to the window to watch for them. Mother, who had
been busy all day, boiling cider and making apple-butter, sat down with
her knitting to rest a few minutes before supper. She said she was
tired, and that she would not cook much; that mush and milk would be
enough.

"She couldn't imagine what had happened when all the ladies appeared,
and she sent me to open the door while she hurried to change her dress.
I followed the usual programme; invited them into the guest-chamber to
lay aside their wraps and mantles, and then gave them seats in the
parlour. Mother was puzzled when she came in and saw them with their
bonnets off, for she supposed, when she saw them coming down the path,
that they were a committee from the Dorcas Society, on some business.
But presently one of the ladies patted me on the head, and complimented
my pretty manners in delivering the invitation to tea.

"If a piece of the sky had fallen, mother could not have been more
surprised, but she gave no sign of it then. She only smiled and made a
pleasant answer.

"I began to feel very comfortable, and to congratulate myself on the
success of my little plan. Presently she excused herself, and beckoned
me to follow her out of the room. Without a word, or even a glance of
reproach, she bade me run across the street and ask my Aunt Rachel and
her daughter Milly to come over at once and help her prepare for the
unexpected guests. They were both of them quick, capable women and fine
housekeepers, and 'flew around,' as they expressed it, in such a
marvellous way that at the proper time the customary feast was spread.

"It did look so good! I walked around the table, my mouth watering as I
looked at the tarts and marmalade and spiced buns, and all the other
tempting dishes. Mother watched me do it, and then, just before she
invited the ladies out to the table, she sent me off to bed without a
morsel to eat,--not even a spoonful of mush and milk.

"I lay in an adjoining room, listening to the clatter of knives and
forks, and the ladylike hum of conversation, and knew that the good
things were slowly but surely disappearing, and that I could not have a
taste. I was so hungry and disappointed that I cried myself to sleep.
That disappointment and the lecture which followed next morning was
punishment enough, and you may be sure that that was the last time I
ever invited my mother's friends on my own responsibility."

Mrs. Brewster paused amid the girls' laughing exclamations, and just
then Mrs. Sherman came in from the train, hot and dusty, and her arms
full of little packages. "Come on up to my room with me," she said to
Mrs. Brewster, who was a frequent and familiar visitor at Locust.

"Don't take her away," begged the Little Colonel, "she is entertaining
us."

"My turn now," laughed Mrs. Sherman. And the two ladies went up-stairs,
once more leaving the girls to the task of providing their own
amusement.

"Wasn't that a picture?" said Joyce, when Mrs. Brewster had left the
room. "Can't you just see it? that quaint little girl in her
old-fashioned dress, going from door to door with her courtesies and her
invitations, and, afterward, all the ladies coming down the
stiff-bordered path between the rows of hollyhocks. I'd love to draw
that picture if I could."

"Try it," urged the girls, so warmly that Joyce went up-stairs for her
drawing material. Betty watched her spread her paper on the library
table. "I believe that I could put that story into rhyme," she said,
after a few minutes of silent thought. "I can feel it humming in my
head."

"Oh, I didn't know that you could write poetry," exclaimed Lloyd. "Try
it now, and see what you can do. You write the poem, and Joyce will
illustrate it."

"I have to be by myself when I write, and I never know how long it will
take. It is like making butter. Sometimes it will come in a few minutes,
and sometimes I have to churn away for hours."

"Begin, anyhow!" insisted the girls, and in a few minutes Betty slipped
away to her room. At lunch-time they teased her to show them what she
had written, but she had only a few lines completed, and would not let
them see even the paper on which she had been scribbling. After lunch
the others went to their rooms to write letters and sleep awhile, but
she went back to her task. Joyce's picture did not turn out to her
satisfaction, and she tore it up, but Betty did her work over and over,
rewriting each line many times. When they were all dressed for dinner,
she did not appear. Finally Joyce went to see what kept her so long. She
found her bending over the paper, her cheeks flushed and her eyes
shining.

"It is done," she cried, writing the last word with a flourish, "but I
hadn't any idea it was so late. I thought I had been up here only a few
minutes. Some of the rhymes just _wouldn't_ twist into shape, but I
think they fit now."

"I'm going to take it down and show it to the girls, while you dress,"
cried Joyce, catching up the paper and running off with it. Although
Betty knew the time was short and she ought to hurry, she could not
resist stealing to the banister and leaning over to hear how it sounded
when her godmother, who was sitting in the lower hall with Lloyd and
Eugenia, read it aloud.

Jemima Araminta knew
Whenever company
Sat round the frugal board, they had
Plum marmalade for tea.

And spiced buns and toothsome tarts,
And divers sweets beside,
Were set to tempt the appetite
With good housewifely pride.

While walking out one day, it chanced
She fell a-pondering sore.
A wicked thought in her small mind
Did tempt her more and more.

At all the neighbours' doors she paused,
Demure and shy was she.
With downcast eyes, she courtesied,
And said, "_Please come to tea._"

Next day along the garden path,
Just as the sun went down,
A score of ladies primly walked,
Each in her Sabbath gown.

Surprised, her mother heard them say,
"Dear child! So shy is she!
What pretty manners she did have
When asking us to tea."

Jemima now remembers well
They once had company,
Preserves and buns and toothsome tarts
When ne'er a taste had she.

For, supperless, to bed that night,
She went, severely chid;
No more the neighbours to invite,
Save at her mother's bid.

"Bravo! little girl," cried Mrs. Sherman, while the girls clapped
loudly. "Have you anything else with you that you have written? If you
have, bring it down with you when you come."

"Yes, godmother," answered Betty, over the banister, blushing until she
could feel her cheeks burn. She was all a-tingle at the thought of her
godmother seeing her verses. She wanted her to see them, and yet,--she
_couldn't_ take down her old ledger for them all to read and criticise.
Not for worlds would she have Eugenia read her verses on "Friendship,"
and there was one about "Dead Hopes" that she felt none of them would
understand. They might even laugh at it.

Several minutes went by before she could make up her mind. When she went
down-stairs she had put the old ledger back into her trunk and carried
only one of the loose leaves in her hands.

"I'll show the others to godmother sometime when we are alone," she said
to herself, as she went shyly up to the group waiting for her, "Here is
one I called 'Night,'" she said, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment.
"There are four verses."

Mrs. Sherman took it, and, glancing down the lines, read aloud the
little poem, commencing:

"Oh, peaceful Night, thou shadowy Queen
Who rules the realms of shade,
Thy throne is on the heaven's arch,
Thy crown of stars is made."

"Oh, Betty, that's splendid!" cried the girls, in chorus. "How could you
think of it?"

"It is remarkably good for a little girl of twelve," said Mrs. Sherman,
glancing over the last verses again. "But I am not surprised. Your
mother wrote some beautiful things. She scribbled verses all the time."

"Oh, I didn't know that!" cried Betty. "How I wish I could see some of
them!"

"You shall, my dear! I have an old portfolio in the library, full of
such things. Poems that she wrote and pictures that Joyce's mother drew;
caricatures of the professors, the little pen and ink sketches of the
places in the Valley we loved the best. I'll get them out for you, after
dinner. You will all be interested in them, especially in a journal they
kept for me one summer when I was at the seashore. One kept a record of
all that happened in the Valley during my absence, and the other
illustrated it."

"Dinner is ready now," said Lloyd, jumping up as the maid opened the
dining-room door. As they all rose to go in, Mrs. Sherman lingered a
moment in the hall, to take the paper from Betty's hand.

"Will you give me this little poem, dear?" she asked, slipping an arm
around the child's waist. "I am very proud of my little god-daughter.
The world will hear from you some day, if you keep on singing. Just do
your bravest and best, and it will be glad to listen to your music."

She stooped and kissed Betty lightly on the forehead. It was as if she
had set the seal of her approval upon her, and to be approved by her
beautiful godmother,--ah, that meant more to the devoted little heart
than any one could dream; far more, even, than if she had been made the
proud laureate of a queen.




CHAPTER XII.

A PILLOW-CASE PARTY.


They were all sitting on the vine-covered porch, looking out between the
tall white pillars into the sultry June darkness. The light from the
hall lamp streamed across the steps where the four Bobs rolled and
tumbled around over each other, but except for that one broad path of
light they could see nothing. There was not even starlight.

"How hot and still it is," said Mrs. Sherman. "There doesn't seem to be
a leaf stirring, and there's not a star in sight. I think it will surely
storm before morning."

"Betty," said Joyce, "your 'shadowy queen who rules the realms of shade'
has forgotten to put on her crown. Now if I could write poetry like some
people I know, I would write an ode to Night and compare it to a stack
of black cats. It wouldn't sound so pretty as your description, but it
would be nearer the truth."

"Well, cats or queens, it doesn't make any difference what you call
it," said the Little Colonel, "it's the stupidest night I evah saw. I
wish something would happen. It seems ages since we have done anything
lively. Now that we are ovah the measles it's wastin' time to be sittin'
heah so poky and stupid. What can we do, mothah?"

"Let's tell ghost stories," said Mrs. Sherman, who knew what was going
to happen in a short time, and wanted to keep the girls occupied until
then. "I know a fine one," she began, sinking her voice to a creepy
undertone that made the girls cast uneasy glances behind them. "It's all
about a haunted house that has clanking chains in the cellar, and
muffled footsteps, and icy fingers that c-lutch you by the throat on the
stairs as the clock tolls the midnight hour."

"Ugh! How good and spooky!" said Joyce, with a little shiver. "I love
that kind."

They drew their chairs around Mrs. Sherman to listen, so interested in
the story that two of the Bobs rolled over each other and off the high
porch, and nobody noticed their whining. Presently, in the most
thrilling part of her story, Mrs. Sherman paused and pointed
impressively down the avenue.

"Oo-oo-oo! what is it? Ghosts?" shrieked the Little Colonel, her teeth
chattering, and in such haste to throw herself into her mother's arms
that her chair turned over with a bang.

"It is a pillow-case party," answered Mrs. Sherman, laughing, "but it is
certainly the most ghostly-looking affair that I ever saw."

Down the long avenue toward them came a wavering line of white-sheeted,
masked figures. They had square heads, and great round holes for eyes,
and the candle that each one carried flashed across a hideous grinning
face, whose mouth and nose had been drawn with burnt cork. The leader of
this strange procession was a veritable giant,--the Goliath of all the
ghosts,--for he loomed up above them to nearly twice the height of the
tallest one in the line. It took two sheets to cover him; one flapped
about his long thin legs, and one swung from his shoulders, swaying from
side to side as he moved noiselessly along with gigantic strides.

"Oh, mothah, it's awful!" whispered the Little Colonel, clinging around
Mrs. Sherman's neck.

"It is almost enough to frighten one," she replied. "But they are all
friends of yours, Lloyd. For instance, the giant is nobody but your good
friend and playfellow, Robby Moore, on stilts; and somewhere in that
bunch of little tots at the tail end of the procession are those funny
little Cassidy twins, Bethel and Ethel. They begged so hard to be
allowed to come that their mother at last consented, although they are
only six years old. She said she would dress up in a sheet and
pillow-case herself, and come with them, to see that nothing happened to
them, so I suppose she is somewhere in the line. I was told that
everybody in the neighbourhood was coming; old people as well as
children, but I'll leave you to find out for yourself, as the fun of a
party like this is in the guessing. They will unmask before they go
home."

The procession glided on in silence until it reached the house, and then
ranged itself in a long line in front of the group on the porch.

"There are thirty-eight," whispered Joyce. "I counted them. Isn't that
one at the end funny? That one in a bolster-case tied at the top, and
his hands sticking out of the slits at the sides, like fishes' fins. I'm
almost sure that it is Keith. I could tell if I could only see his
hands, but he has white stockings drawn over them."

The figures began waving to and fro, faster and faster, until they were
all drawn into a weird, uncanny dance, in which each one flapped or
writhed or swayed back and forth as he pleased, in ghostly silence. The
movements of the ones in the bolster-cases were the most comical, and
the little audience on the porch laughed until they could only gasp and
hold their sides.

At a signal from the tall leader, the sheeted party suddenly divided,
half of the masked faces grinning on one side of the steps, and half
going to the other. Then an auction began, one side being sold to the
other. The bidding was all in pantomime, and they all looked so much
alike that nobody knew whom he was bidding for, or to whom he was
knocked down. The giant was the auctioneer.

At last each bidder was provided with a partner, and two by two they all
went gravely up the steps to shake hands with Mrs. Sherman and the
girls. Every one spoke in an assumed voice, and recognition was almost
impossible. The girls talked with every one in turn, but Rob and Keith
were the only boys they had recognised when the signal for unmasking was
given, and little Bethel Cassidy was the only girl. They knew her queer
little lisp.

Cake and sherbet were brought out, and great was everybody's
astonishment when masks were slipped off, and the pillow-cases jerked
away from the wearers' rumpled hair. To Keith's disgust, he found that
the partner whom he had bid for energetically, thinking it was Sally
Fairfax, was only his brother Malcolm, and Malcolm teased him all
evening by quoting aloud some of the complimentary speeches Keith had
whispered to him under cover of their disguises.

"Oh, gracious!" roared Malcolm. "It was _too_ funny; Keith, fanning me
with one of those stubby little stocking-covered fins of his, and making
complimentary speeches about my eyes. Told me he would know them
anywhere. And he spouted poetry, he did," added Malcolm, doubling up
with another laugh. "Oh, it was _too_ good! Hi, Buddy," chucking Keith
under the chin, "are you of the same opinion still? Ain't they pretty,
'mine eyes so blue and tender?'"

"Aw, hush!" growled Keith, in a shamefaced sort of way, adding, in a
savage undertone, "I'll make _black_ eyes of 'em if you don't stop."

That was not the only odd assortment of partners, for Miss Allison had
bid for plump little Mrs. Cassidy, thinking it was one of the boys in
her Sunday school class; and one little maid of seven found that an old
bachelor uncle had fallen to her lot.

"You see we made a wholesale affair of it," said Miss Allison to
Eugenia. "We drove around the neighbourhood in two big wagonettes, and
picked up whole families at a time."

"It is the jolliest surprise I ever saw," answered Eugenia, looking all
around at the little groups laughing and talking over their
refreshments. "It is hard to tell which are having the best time, the
children or the grown people; they are all mixed up together."

As she spoke the buzz of voices ceased, for there was a sudden blinding
flash of lightning and a loud peal of thunder that made the windows
rattle. The storm which Mrs. Sherman had predicted would come before
morning, had crept up unnoticed, and caught them unawares.

"Come inside!" cried Mrs. Sherman, as, with a furious rush and roar the
wind swept across them, banging window shutters, whirling leaves and
gravel in their faces, and lashing the trees until they were bent almost
double. Another blinding glare of lightning followed, with such a crash
of thunder that Eugenia put her fingers in her ears and screamed, and
Betty hid her face in her hands.

"Hurry!" cried Mrs. Sherman. "I am afraid that some of these flying
shingles, or whatever they are, will hurt some one. It is almost a
cyclone."

Breathless and excited, they all hurried into the house, and banged the
great front door in the face of the storm. The children tumbled into the
drawing-room, the smaller ones huddling in a frightened heap in the
middle of the floor, until the fury of the storm was over. There was
nothing to do but wait with bated breath after each vivid flash of
lightning for the terrific crash that always followed, and listen to the
wind outside as it fought with the sturdy tree-tops. Now and then a limb
snapped in the fierce struggle, and fell to the ground with a loud
crackling noise.

"I hope there will be enough of a roof left over our heads to shelter
us," said Mrs. Sherman, as bricks from the chimney tops began rolling
down the roof and falling to the ground below with heavy thuds.

"We expected to start home about this time," Miss Allison was saying.
"We ordered the wagonettes to come back for us at ten o'clock, but it
looks now as if we are storm-bound for the night. Did you ever hear such
a downpour?"

"It's the clatter of the rain on the tin roof of the porch," answered
Mrs. Sherman, speaking at the top of her voice in order to be heard
above the deafening din of the rain and wind.

For nearly half an hour they sat waiting for the storm to pass. Several
games were proposed, but none of the children wanted to play. They
seemed to feel more comfortable when they were snuggled up close
against some grown person, or holding some elderly protecting hand. But
gradually the lightning grew fainter and fainter, and the thunder went
growling away in the distance, although the rain kept steadily on. Mrs.
Sherman called for some music in the drawing-room, and while Miss
Allison and Mrs. Cassidy played the liveliest duets they knew, the
children drifted out into the hall and over the house as they pleased.

Most of the older boys and girls sat on the stairs in groups of twos and
threes, while from the upper hall the scurry of feet, and the singsong
cry that London Bridge was falling down, showed what the little ones
were playing. It was after eleven o'clock when the wagonettes came
rumbling up to the door. The rain had stopped, and a few stars were
beginning to struggle through the clouds.

"How cold and damp it is!" exclaimed Mrs. Sherman, as she stepped out on
the front porch. "The thermometer must have fallen twenty degrees since
you came. You will all need wraps of some kind. Wait till I can get you
some shawls and things."

"No, indeed!" every one protested. "We will wrap up in our sheets again.
We do not need anything else."

There was a laughing scrimmage over the pile of sheets that had been
thrown hastily into one corner of the hall, when the party ran in out of
the storm. Nearly all the masks and pillow-cases were put on again, too,
so that the party broke up in laughing confusion. Nobody recognised his
neighbour or knew who he was bumping against as he hurried up to bid his
perplexed hostess good night.

With a great cracking of whips and creaking of wheels the spectral party
drove off, to the tune of "Good-night, ladies, we're going to leave you
now." Far down the road the chorus came floating back to the listeners
on the porch, "Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along."

"Wasn't it funny?" yawned Lloyd, as she went sleepily up the stairs.
"But oh, I'm so tiahed. I believe if they had stayed much longah, I'd
have fallen ovah in a heap on the flo'."

All the lights were out down-stairs, and the girls were nearly
undressed, when they were surprised to hear one of the wagonettes coming
back. A frantic clang of the knocker on the front door brought them all
to the windows.

"Oh, Mrs. Sherman!" cried an agonised voice out of the darkness, that
they recognised as Mrs. Cassidy's, "are the twins here? Bethel and
Ethel? We can't find them anywhere. I was sure that I lifted them into
the wagonette myself, but every one was so disguised that I must have
mistaken somebody else's children for mine."

"They are not in either wagonette," added Rob Moore's voice. "We never
thought to count noses until we reached the Cassidy place, and then we
found they were missing."

Hastily slipping into a wrapper, Mrs. Sherman ran down-stairs with a
candle in her hand, and opened the front door. Plump little Mrs. Cassidy
was standing there, wringing her hands.

"Oh, _don't_ tell me that they are not here!" she cried. "Didn't you see
them when you were locking up the house after we left? Then I know
they're lost. They must have slipped away from the porch before the
storm came up, and were playing outside somewhere when we all ran inside
and shut the door. Oh, my babies!" she wailed. "If they were out in all
that awful storm it has killed them, I know. Oh, why did I do such a
foolish thing as to bring them? They were too little to come, I knew
that. But they begged so hard, and they looked so cute in those little
ruffled pillow-cases, that I hadn't the heart to refuse. Oh, what shall
I do?"

"They must be somewhere about the house," said Mrs. Sherman, with such
decision that Mrs. Cassidy was comforted, and began wiping her eyes.

"Come in, and help me search. Maybe they slipped up-stairs when the
other children were playing, and went to sleep in some dark corner. Come
on, boys. Light up the house from attic to cellar, and see who will be
first to find them. It will be a game of hunt the twins, instead of hunt
the slipper."

Then up-stairs, and down-stairs, and in my lady's chamber, went a
strange procession, for nearly every one was still draped in sheet and
pillow-case. Into closets, behind screens, in all the corners, and under
all the beds they looked. Keith, remembering the sad story of Ginevra,
even lifted the lid of every chest and trunk in the linen room. Poor
little Mrs. Cassidy followed, wringing her hands, and sobbing that she
knew that they had been shut outside in the storm and the night.
Suddenly, when they had been all over the house for the third time, she
caught up a lamp, and ran out in the dark, like some poor mad creature,
calling, "Oh, Bethel! Oh, my little Ethel! Don't you hear your mother?"

By this time, the servants' quarters were aroused, and Mrs. Sherman, now
really alarmed, called for Walker and Alec to bring lanterns. The lawn
was a wreck, strewn with leaves and fallen limbs and pieces of broken
flower urns that had been overturned by the wind. The searchers stumbled
over them as they waded through the wet grass, looking in every nook and
corner where it was possible for a child to have strayed, but their
search was in vain. Never a trace did they find of the lost twins.

"Stay in the house, girls," said Mrs. Sherman, as she caught up the
trail of her wrapper, and ran out to follow the flickering lanterns and
Mrs. Cassidy's frantic cries. "It might give you your death of cold to
expose yourselves so soon after the measles."

As they stood in the door watching the wavering lights, Lloyd exclaimed,
"The puppies are gone, too. I wonder where they can be. Maybe they were
left outside in the storm when we all ran indoors in such a hurry. Maybe
the twins were playing with them."

She leaned out of the door, peering into the night. "Heah, Bob!" she
called, snapping her fingers, and whistling the shrill signal she always
gave when she fed them. There was no response from the darkness outside,
and she turned indoors repeating the whistle, and calling, "Heah, Bob!
Heah, puppy! Come to yo' miss!"

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