sang Jack, nonchalantly.
"Oh, Laura," remonstrated Bell, "think twice before you encourage him in his dreadful ways. We have studied him very carefully, and we know that the only way to live with him is to keep him in a sort of "pint pot" where we can hold the lid open just a little, and clap it down suddenly whenever he tries to spring out."
"Do not mind that young person, Miss Laura, but form your own impressions of my charming character. Excuse me, please, while I put on a celluloid collar, and make some few changes in my toilet necessary to a proper appearance in your distinguished company."
"I prefer you as you are," answered Laura, laughingly. "Let us start at once."
"Do you hear that, young person? She prefers me as I are! Now see what magic power her generosity has upon me!" And he darted into the tent, from which he issued in a moment with his Derby hat, a manzanita cane, a pocket-handkerchief tied about his throat, and a flower pinned on his flannel camping-shirt--a most ridiculous figure, since nothing seems so out of place in the woods as any suggestion of city costumes or customs. Laura was in high good-humour, and looked exceedingly brilliant and pretty, as she always did when she was the central figure of any group or the bright particular star of any occasion.
"Be home before dark," said Dr. Winship. "Pancho, keep a look-out for the pack-mule. Truth, one of the pack-mules has disappeared."
"So? Dumpling or Ditto?"
"Ditto, curiously enough. His name should have led him not to set an example, but to follow one."
Elsie came.
Perhaps you thought that this was going to be an exciting story, and that something would happen to keep her at the Tacitas ranch; but nothing did. Everything came to pa.s.s exactly as it was arranged, and Jack met his mother and sister at twelve o"clock some four miles from the camp, and escorted them to the gates.
"Welcome" had been painted on twenty different boards or bits of white cloth and paper, and nailed here and there on the trees that lined the rough wood-road; the strains of an orchestra, formed of a guitar, banjo, castanets, Chinese fiddle, and tin cans, greeted them from a distance, but were properly allowed to die away in silence when the guest neared the tents. Everything wore a new and smiling face, and Elsie never came more dangerously near being squeezed to death.
Elsie, in the prettiest of gingham dresses, and her cloud of golden hair braided in two funny little pugs to keep it out of the dust; Elsie, with a wide hat that shaded her face, already a little tanned and burned, no longer colourless; Elsie, with no lines of pain in her pretty forehead, and the hollow ring gone from her voice; Elsie, who jumped over the wheel of the wagon, and hugged her huggers with the strength of a young bear! It was too good to believe, and n.o.body did quite believe it for days.
At three o"clock the happiest party in the world a.s.sembled at the rough dining-table under the sycamore-trees.
Elsie beamed upon the feast from the high-backed manzanita chair, a faint colour in her cheeks, and starry prisms of light in a pair of eyes that had not sparkled for many a weary month. Hop Yet smiled a trifle himself, wore his cap with a red b.u.t.ton on the top to wait upon the table, and ministered to the hungry people with more interest and alacrity than he had shown since he had been dragged from Santa Barbara, his Joss, and his nightly game of fantan. And such a dinner as he had prepared in honour of the occasion!--longer by four courses than usual, and each person was allowed two plates in the course of the meal.
BILL OF FARE FOR HER MAJESTY"S DINNER
Quail Soup. Crackers.
Chili Colorado.
(Mutton stew, in Spanish style, with Chili peppers, tomatoes, and onions.) Cold Boiled Ham. Fried Potatoes.
Apples and Onions stewed together.
Ginger-snaps. Pickles.
Peaches, Apricots, and Nectarines.
California Nuts and Raisins.
Coffee.
And last of all, a surprise of Bell"s, flapjacks, long teased for by the boys, and prepared and fried by her own hands while the merry party waited at table, to get them smoking hot.
She came in flushed with heat and pride, the prettiest cook anybody ever saw, with her hair bobbed up out of the way and doing its best to escape, a high-necked white ap.r.o.n, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and an insinuating spot of batter in the dimple of her left cheek.
"There!" she cried, joyfully, as she deposited a heaping plate in front of her mother, and set the tin can of maple syrup by its side.
"Begin on those, and I"ll fry like lightning on two griddles to keep up with you," and she rushed to the brush kitchen to turn her next instalments that had been left to brown. Hop Yet had retired to a distant spot by the brook, and was washing dish-towels. All Chinese cooks are alike in their horror of a woman in the kitchen; but some of them will unbend so far as to allow her to amuse herself so long as they are not required to witness the disagreeable spectacle.
Bell delicately inserted the cake-turner under the curled edges of the flapjacks and turned them over deftly, using a little too much force, perhaps, in the downward stroke when she flung them back on the griddle.
"Seems to me they come down with considerable of a thud," she said, reflectively. "I hope they"re not tough, for I should never hear the last of it. Guess I"ll punch one with the handle of this tin shovel, and see how it acts. Goodness! it"s sort of--elastic. That"s funny.
Well, perhaps it"s the way they ought to look." Here she transferred the smoking mysteries to her plate, pa.s.sed a bit of pork over the griddles, and, after ladling out eight more, flew off to the group at the table.
"Are they good?" she was beginning to ask, when the words were frozen on her lips by the sight of a significant tableau.
The four boys were standing on the bench that served instead of dining-chairs, each with a plate and a pancake on the table in front of them. Jack held a hammer and spike, Scott Burton a hatchet, Geoffrey a saw, and Philip a rifle. Bell was nothing if not intuitive. No elaborate explanations ever were needed to show her a fact. Without a word she flung the plate of flapjacks she held as far into a thicket as she had force to fling it, and then dropped on her knees.
""Shoot, if you must, this old grey head, But spare my flapjacks, sirs," she said!
"What"s the matter with them? Tough? I refuse to believe it. Your tools are too dull,--that"s all. Use more energy! Nothing in this world can be accomplished without effort."
"They"re a lovely brown," began Mrs. Winship, sympathetically.
"And they have a very good flavour," added Elsie.
"Don"t touch them, dearest!" cried Bell, s.n.a.t.c.hing the plate from under Elsie"s very nose. "I won"t have you made ill by my failures.
But as for the boys, I don"t care a fig for them. Let them make flapjacks more to their taste, the odious things! Polly Oliver, did you put in that baking powder, as I told you, while I went for the pork?"
Polly blanched. "Baking powder?" she faltered.
"Yes, baking powder! B-A-K-I-N-G P-O-W-D-E-R! Do I make myself plain?"
"Oh, baking powder, to be sure. Well, now that you mention the matter, I do remember that d.i.c.ky called me away just as I was getting it; and now that I think of it, Elsie came just afterwards, and--and- -"
"And that"s the whole of my story, O," sang Jack. "I recommend the criminal to the mercy of the court."
"A case of too many cooks," laughed Dr. Winship. "Cheer up, girls; better fortune next time."
"There are eight more of them burning on the griddles this moment, Polly," said Bell, scathingly; "and as they are yours, not mine, I advise you to throw them in the brook, with the rest of the batter, so that Hop Yet won"t know that there has been a failure."
"Some people blight everything they touch," sighed Polly, gloomily, as she departed for the kitchen.
"But when I lie in the green kirkyard -
"Oh, Polly, dear," interrupted Margery, "that apology will not serve any longer; you"ve used it too often."
"This is going to be entirely different," continued Polly, tragically.
"But when I lie in the green kirkyard, With the mould upon my b.r.e.a.s.t.s Say not that she made flapjacks well, Only, she did her best."
"We promise!" cried Bell.