"Two years ain"t much!"
"She knows how to behave herself."
"So do I! I"ll be as good as gold--"
"I"ve taken you on that promise before."
"Oh, Oh, Oh! I will go! I"m going straight to mother and ask her now."
"Mother is worse tonight and can"t be bothered. Stop your yelling, or she will hear you."
"I want her to hear! I shall go! She said I might!" The storm was on in all its fury.
"Hush!" interposed Cherry, running to her sobbing sister and trying to soothe her wild rebellion with gentle caresses. "I will stay home with you, Peace. I don"t care much about going, anyway."
"You can stay at home if you want to," declared the small rebel with emphasis, "but _I_ am going!"
"Children, children, what is all this racket about?" asked a gentle, grieved voice, suddenly, and the shamed-faced trio wheeled to find the pale, little, invalid mother standing in their midst.
"Oh, mother, mayn"t I go? Faith says I can"t, but you promised me when Mr. Kane went away that I could go to the next reception if I would make no more fuss about not going to his."
"So I did, dear--"
"But a reception for a new minister is no place for such little girls, mother," broke in Faith, petulantly.
"The "nouncements said to bring the _babies_"--involuntarily the mother smiled and the other sisters giggled. "I am lots bigger than a baby--"
"You don"t act it--"
"Faith!" The mother"s face was as reproving as her voice, and the older girl"s cheeks flushed crimson as she murmured humbly, "I am sorry, mother; but really, she does say such awful things. She is always talking. And just look at that dress!"
"I thought it would be pretty--" began Peace, but at that moment she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror, and stopped so abruptly, with such a comical look of dismay and despair in her eyes, that the whole group burst out laughing. Peace joined in their merriment, and then soberly said, "I look like a chicken when the down is turning to feathers. What can I do about it? I _can"t_ stay at home!"
"Where is your green dress?"
"Gail hasn"t mended it yet."
Faith saw her opportunity and immediately compromised. "Peace, if I mend your dress for you so you can go, will you sit perfectly still all the evening and never say a word until you are spoken to?"
"Yes, oh, yes, I"ll promise!"
The mother opened her lips to speak, but thought better of it, and with a smile in her eyes, withdrew, leaving the children to their final preparations.
At length the torn dress was neatly mended and b.u.t.toned on the wriggling owner, the bright curls were given a second brushing and tied back with a band of pink ribbon from Faith"s own treasures, and the sisters were on their way to the mother"s room for a good-bye kiss when a fourth girl, looking very sweet in a fresh, blue gingham, rushed excitedly up the stairs and demanded, "Where did you say you put the cake, Faith?
Gail can"t find it."
"Why, it"s on the wash-bench under the pantry window, covered up with the big dishpan."
"There is nothing under the dishpan but an empty plate."
"Hope! You are fooling!"
"Cross my heart and hope to die," was the solemn answer. "Gail looked and I looked. She says somebody must have stolen it."
"The tramp!" cried Faith and Cherry in one voice.
"Bet he didn"t!" declared Peace, who had stood open-mouthed and silent during Hope"s recital. "I gave him a great big lunch and--and some matches to make some more with--"
"Yes," said Faith, bitterly grieved over the loss of the cake, "and kept him hanging around here all the morning, till we thought he never was going. I suppose he took the cake for his dinner."
"I don"t believe it! But he did weed those flower beds beau--ti--fully!"
cried Peace, championing his cause. "And he strung Hope"s vines just as even! And the lawn is all mowed, and there ain"t a sprill of gra.s.s left in the onion patch, and the rain barrel is fixed up and the back step is mended, and--did he stop up the leaks in the hen house? I told him just where they were."
"Perhaps you told him to pay for his breakfast, too," suggested the older girl, sarcastically. "We found a half dollar under his cup after he was gone."
"A sure-enough half dollar?" asked Peace, too astonished to believe her ears.
"Yes, a sure-enough half dollar!"
"Where is it? I want to see it for myself."
"On the pantry shelf. Gail thought he might have left it there by mistake and would come back after it. But I don"t."
"Maybe he left it to pay for taking the cake," suggested Allee, who had joined the excited group in the hall.
"He never took the cake," Peace a.s.serted stoutly. "But I don"t think he will ever come back for his money, either. He wouldn"t have left it in the dishes if he hadn"t meant it for us. His clothes had pockets in them, same as any other man"s, and if he had any money, he would have kept it there and not carried it around in his hands. Wish he would come back, though. I"d ask him about the cake, just to show you he never took it."
"See here, Peace Greenfield," cried Faith, with sudden suspicion, "do you know where that cake is?"
"No, I don"t! How should I know? But I don"t believe that tramp took it.
So there!"
"I don"t believe he was even a tramp. Suppose he was a bad man, who had done something terrible, and the police were after him--"
"Yes, or s"pose he was a prince," Peace broke in, remembering her conversation with the gray, old man. "He might be one for all we know, but he didn"t look like a bad man."
"Suppose we stop supposing," laughed Hope, "and all hunt for the cake.
Someone may have hid it just for fun. We"ve half an hour before we really must go to the church."
"I don"t care to go at all if that cake is gone," declared Faith, crossly. "Mrs. Wardlaw will begin to think I am lying to get out of helping with refreshments if I have to make excuses again tonight."
"But you"re on the program," protested the smaller girls.
"I guess maybe we will find it somewhere," said Hope. "Come on and help." And they scattered in their search for the missing loaf.
But, though they looked high and low, indoors and out, not a trace could they find of it, except the clean, empty plate under the dishpan; and in despair Peace climbed to her gatepost to ponder the question of whether tramp and cake had disappeared together or whether some local agent was the cause of its vanishing. "If it had been a nanimal," she said, thoughtfully, "it would have knocked the dishpan off the bench and broken the plate. It must have been a person. I"d think it was Hec Abbott, only--mercy! What in the world is this? Money! Sure as I"m alive!" Scrambling down from her perch, she raced for the house, shouting, "Gail, Faith, look what I"ve found, hitched to the gatepost!"
The five sisters ran to meet her, and into Gail"s hand she thrust a crumpled, green sc.r.a.p.