So the boys drew up their chairs, and Polly pushed the cook-book, with an affectionate little pat, into the center of the table. "That"s what we are going to study," she said gleefully.
"Study?" echoed Pickering, with a very long face. "I didn"t come over here to study; I get enough of that at school," and he glared in a very injured way at Jasper.
"Don"t get upset," said Jasper, patting him on the back; "you"ll like this, Pick, I tell you."
"And it"s a cook-book," said Polly, laughing merrily.
"All right," said Pickering, immensely relieved, and reaching out his long arm, he seized it, and whirled the leaves. ""Lemon pie"--that sounds good.
"How to cook cabbage"--oh, dear me!"
"See here now"--Jasper seized the book and shut it up with a bang--"no one is going to look into that, until we write these notices. Why, we haven"t even got a Cooking Club yet."
"Give it back," roared Pickering after him, as Jasper hopped out of his chair, carrying the book.
"No, sir," cried Jasper, bearing off the book out of the room. "There, you"ll never find that," he observed, coming back to slip into his seat with satisfaction.
"Well, now," said Alexia sweetly, "if you two boys are through sc.r.a.pping, we"ll begin on these notices." She picked an envelope off from the pile.
"Oh, dear me! who is the first one to ask?"
"I think Larry ought to have it," said Polly.
"Oh, Polly Pepper!" exclaimed Alexia, "Larry can"t come for ever so long, with his collar bone all smashed and his leg hurt. The very idea!"
Polly gave a little shiver, "Well, he would like to be asked," she said.
"And I think so, too," declared Jasper; "a chap would enjoy it twice as much to get an invitation when he was abed and couldn"t come."
"Well, that"s nice to say," cried Alexia, bursting into a loud laugh, in which Pickering joined.
"You"ve done it now," he said, clapping Jasper on the back. "I"m glad of it, old chap, after the way you acted about that old cook-book."
"So I have," said Jasper grimly. Then he laughed as hard as the others.
"Well, you know what I mean, and we ought to give Larry the first attention."
"I"m going to write the notice to him," declared Alexia, dipping her pen in the ink-well and beginning with a flourish. But she threw it down before she had finished his first name. "Polly, you ought to write the first notice," she cried; "you proposed the Club."
"That"s no matter," said Polly, "so long as we are going to have the Club.
Go ahead, Alexia."
"No, I"m not going to," said Alexia obstinately, and leaning back in her chair; "you"ve just got to do it, Polly, so there!"
"There"ll be no peace, Polly, for any of us until you do," said Pickering, thrusting his hands lazily into his pockets.
"And I think people would do better to go to work and help," said Alexia decidedly, "than to set other people against--oh, dear me!" as she found herself hopelessly entangled.
"You would do better to get yourself out of that sentence, Alexia," laughed Jasper, "before you do anything else."
"Well, I don"t care," said Alexia, joining in the general laugh; "it"s too mean for anything, Pickering, to say I fight, when everybody knows I suffer just everything before I say a word."
"Oh, dear me!" cried Pickering faintly.
"And when you two stop sparring," said Jasper, "perhaps we can do some work. Come now, Polly and I don"t propose to do the whole."
Alexia, at this, scrabbled up another envelope, and began to write as fast as she could. And Pickering selecting a pen and getting down to business, the room began to a.s.sume a very work-like aspect.
"Now that"s done," said Alexia, tossing aside the envelope. "I"ve addressed notice number two."
"Whose is it?" asked Pickering, glancing up from his own to the scrawling characters where the envelope lay face uppermost on the table. "Who is number two, Alexia?"
"You mustn"t see," cried Alexia, twitching it away; "you go on and address your own, Pickering, and let mine alone."
"Well, I"ve seen already," said Pickering coolly. "It would be impossible not to read your writing a mile off, Alexia."
"Well, that"s much better than to write such mean, lazy little words that n.o.body can make them out," she retorted.
"Oh, clear! we haven"t a pattern of the notice made yet," said Polly, leaning back in her chair, after the labor of getting the first envelope addressed; and she pushed up the little brown rings of hair from her brow, for Polly didn"t like very well to write, and it always took her some time to achieve anything in that line. "Jasper, you draw up one, do," she begged.
"Oh, dear me!" cried Jasper, aghast, "I can"t, Polly; you can do it much better."
"Misery me!" exclaimed Polly, "I couldn"t do it in all this world," and she looked so distressed that Jasper hastened to say:
"Come along then, Pick, and help me out, and I"ll try."
But Picketing protesting that he didn"t know any more how to write such a notice than Prince lying on the rug before the fire, Jasper in despair drew up a sheet of paper, and wrote in big staring letters and with a great flourish, clear across the top of the page:
"ATTENTION."
"Goodness me!" cried Pickering, his pale eyes following Jasper"s pen, "it looks like a fire-alarm summons."
"Or just like Miss Salisbury when she"s going to say something quite ugly and horrid," said Alexia, with a grimace.
"Oh, Alexia!" said Polly.
"Well, it does," said Alexia; "you know for yourself, Polly, she always stands up quite stiff on the platform and says, "Attention, young ladies!"
Oh, I quite hate the word, because we all have to look at her."
"Well, it does good service then," said Jasper coolly, "since it makes you do the very thing wanted."
"And we wouldn"t mind looking at her," said Alexia, running on with her reminiscences, "if she didn"t make us do every single thing she says."
"That"s too bad," said Jasper, with a laugh, and flourishing away on the second line of the notice.
"You needn"t laugh," said Alexia grimly; "I guess you wouldn"t if you had our Miss Salisbury at your school, Jasper King."
"Is she any worse than our Mr. Fraser?" said Jasper. "I wonder. I tell you what, Alexia, he keeps us boys at it! Doesn"t he, Pick?"
"Well, I rather guess," said Picketing concisely, but his look told volumes.
"Oh, you boys have an easy enough time," said Alexia, with a sniff, "and you are always grumbling about how hard it is, while I don"t say a word, but just bear things."