"All right, Miss Peace. I"ll see that you aren"t bothered with any more packages."
Peace heaved a great sigh of relief, and turned energetically back to her basket weaving, which had been sadly neglected of late. The parcels actually did cease coming, and the two conspirators hugged themselves with delight that it had not been necessary to tell their secret so no one knew what sillies they were. By common consent they barred chain letters as a topic of conversation, and had almost forgotten the hateful packages when one morning Peace received a letter from Miss Truman, still a teacher in the Parker School, saying that she had just mailed a large box addressed to the little invalid, and hoped that Peace would enjoy its contents. The girl was wild with antic.i.p.ation, but the parcel did not put in appearance that afternoon, nor the next day, nor the next.
"I am afraid it has gone astray," said Grandpa Campbell when the third morning pa.s.sed without it coming.
"And won"t I ever get it?" asked Peace disconsolately.
"Such things sometimes happen, though Parker is such a short distance from here that it seems almost impossible for it to have been lost. I will call at the Post Office and inquire. Perhaps for some reason it is stalled there."
That afternoon he appeared with the coveted parcel in his hand and a mystified look in his eyes.
"You got it?" shrieked Peace in ecstasy.
"Yes, I got it, but if the Postmaster had not been a very good friend of mine, you would never have seen it."
"Why not?" Peace was genuinely amazed. "What right had the Postmaster to my package? Did he want to keep it?"
"He tells me that you issued orders two weeks or more ago not to deliver any more packages to your address."
"He--oh, that was b.u.t.tons! I didn"t mean this kind of packages."
"b.u.t.tons!" the President looked even more puzzled.
"O, dear," sighed Peace unhappily. "Now I"ve got to tell what a silly-pate I"ve been." So she poured out the tale of the endless chain to the astonished man, ending with the characteristic remark, "And I told the letter-carrier to send all the rest of the b.u.t.ton packages to the letter graveyard at Washington, but I s"posed of course he"d bring me packages like this."
"He has no way of distinguishing between them, my dear," the President gravely informed her, trying hard to keep his face straight. "You ordered _all_ parcels addressed to you stopped. You refused to accept them, and there will be no more delivered to you."
"_Never?_" gasped Peace.
"Well,--not for months and months and months. I don"t know exactly how we can get the matter fixed up now."
"And will they keep all my _Christmas_ packages, too?"
"If they come addressed to you."
"Where"s my pencil and postcards?" She began a wild, scrambling search, through the drawers of the table which always stood beside her chair.
"What do you want of them?" the man inquired with considerable curiosity.
"Why, I"ve got to write everyone I know and tell "em if they want to send me anything for Christmas or my birthday, or any other time, to address it on the outside to Allee," she retorted, scribbling away energetically.
CHAPTER VIII
ALLEE"S ALb.u.m
"You are late, Allee." Peace had watched the little figure ever since it had turned the corner a block further down the street, and noted with increasing anxiety that the usually swift feet tonight were lagging and slow. Indeed, so abstracted was the belated scholar that she almost forgot to turn in at her own gate, and in Peace"s mind this could mean only one thing,--Allee had fallen below grade in her arithmetic that afternoon and had been kept after school to make it up. As a further indication that this was the case, she was intently studying the front page of a scratch-tablet, and when Peace called to her, she hastily hid the paper under her ap.r.o.n, while her rosy cheeks grew rosier still, and a look of guilty alarm flew into her blue eyes.
"Am I?" She tried to speak naturally, but suspicious Peace detected the strained note in her voice, and demanded, "Were you kept after school?"
"Yes,--no,--not really school."
"What do you mean by that? Cherry"s been home for more"n half an hour."
"That long?" Allee"s amazement was too genuine to doubt.
"Yes, and you said you"d come home the minute school was out so"s we could finish that puzzle and send it off."
"I didn"t mean to stay so long. It seemed only a minute, Peace, truly."
Allee was deeply penitent.
"Where have you been? To see Miss Edith?"
"No--o--"
"And what"s that you are hiding under your ap.r.o.n? Allee Greenfield, you"ve got a secret from me!" cried Peace, much aggrieved.
Poor Allee"s face flushed crimson, the frank eyes wavered and fell, and a meek voice stammered, "I--I--"tisn"t really a secret, Peace."
"What is it then?"
"I was afraid you would laugh at me--"
"Why? What is there to laugh at?"
"My--my rhymes."
"Rhymes?"
"Yes. You know Hope has to write "em in High School, and even Cherry"s teacher took a notion to make her scholars try thinking up poetry."
"Has your teacher?"
"O, no, but at recess we play school and one of our games is making up rhymes. The leader says anything she wants to, and we have to answer so it will make a jingle. It"s like spelling down. If we miss we have to go to the foot of the cla.s.s."
"Mercy me! the whole house will be talking poetry next," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Peace. "Gail"s just written one that the--the--what is the name of that paper?--has printed with her name at the bottom of it, and Cherry came home tonight with her head so big that she can hardly lug it, "cause her verses were the best in her room. But I didn"t think it would hit _you_.
Why, there"s getting to be a reg"lar _emetic_ of poetry "round here."
Allee looked crestfallen. "It"s fun when you know how," she ventured, apologetically. "Gussie showed me, and helps me get the feet straight."
"Feet! Gussie! Is she at it, too?"
"Gussie writes perfectly elegant rhymes," Allee defended. "You haven"t forgotten those dishes she cooked for you and rhymed over, have you?"
"I guess not! They were so funny. I pasted "em into my "Glimmers of Gladness.""