"Of course if we are going to eat up a tree we had better have mighty solid pies," laughed Page. "How about fried turnovers like Mammy Susan makes?"
"Grand!" from Dum. "Apple?"
"Yes, apple," laughed Helen, amused at Dum"s enthusiasm, "also some lemon pies, don"t you think? I mean cheese cakes."
"Splendid and more and more splendid!"
The girls went to work, Page on the fried turnovers and Helen on the cheese cakes. Such a merry time they were having, all busy and all talking! Oscar sat outside picking chickens and of necessity Susan was driven to the extreme corner of the kitchen with her heap of washing and ironing.
"I think you are awfully clever, Helen, to learn to make pastry so quickly. How did you do it?" said Page, deftly forming a turnover.
"I don"t know--I just did it. It seems to me as though anyone can cook who will follow a recipe. I had a few lessons at the Y. W. C. A. in the spring and I learned a lot there. How did you learn?"
"Well, when I was a kiddie I had no one to play with but Mammy Susan, so I used to stay in the kitchen and play cooking. I"ve been making thimble biscuit and eggsh.e.l.l cake ever since I could walk."
"How do you make eggsh.e.l.l cake?"
"Just put the left-over sc.r.a.pings of batter in the eggsh.e.l.ls and bake it. It cooks in a minute and then you peel off the sh.e.l.l. Scrumptious!"
Dee came running in with the mail, having been to the post office at Greendale with Josh and Bobby and the faithful Josephus.
"A letter from Zebedee and he will be up for sure this evening! Ain"t that grand? But guess who is coming with him--old Hiram G. Parker! I believe Zebedee must have lost his mind. I am really uneasy about him."
"Why, what is the matter with Mr. Parker?" asked Helen, who had been much interested in what she had heard of that gentleman"s charms and graces.
""No matter, no matter, only ideas!" as the idealist said when the materialist saw him falling down stairs, b.u.mping his head at every step, and asked him what was the matter," laughed Dee. "Didn"t you ever meet Mr. Parker?"
"No, but I have always understood he was all kinds of lovely things."
"Oh, he"ll do," put in Dum, "if you like wax works. He wears the prettiest pants in town and has more neckties and socks than an ordinary man could buy if he went shopping every day. He knows all the latest jokes and when they give out, he starts in on the others. He makes jokes of his own, too--not like Zebedee"s--Zebedee always bubbles out in a joke but Hiram G. leads up to his. First he gets one, a joke I mean, and then he gets a crowd of listeners. Then he directs the conversation into the proper channel and dams it up and when it is just right he launches his joke."
"You certainly do mix your metaphors," laughed Page, crimping her turnovers with a fork. "You start out with bubbling brooks and end up with the launching of ships.
""She starts! she moves! she seems to feel The thrill of life along her keel.""
"Well, Zebedee does bubble and Hiram G. Parker doesn"t; neither does a boat, so there. Oh, oh! Look at the goodies. How on earth do you make such cute edges to your tarts? Just see them, girls!"
"I did mine with a broken fork but Mammy Susan says she knows an old woman who always did hers with her false teeth." After the shout that went up from this had subsided, Helen begged to know more of Mr.
Parker.
"Is he a great friend of your father?"
"Why no, that is the reason I can"t divine why he is bringing him up here. I believe Zebedee likes him well enough--at least I never heard him say anything to the contrary. There is no harm in the dude that I ever heard of. Of course he is the Lord High Muck-a-Muck with the buds.
He decides which ones are to ornament society and which ones to be picked for funerals. He has already looked over Dum and me at a hop last Thanksgiving at the Jefferson; Page, too. I believe he thinks we"ll do, at least he danced us around and wrote on our back with invisible chalk: "Pa.s.sed by the Censor of Society." I believe he thinks a lot of Zebedee, but then everyone does who has even a glimmering of sense," and Dee reread her father"s letter, a joint one for her and her sister, with a postscript for Page.
"Well, all he says is that he is coming and going to bring the immaculate Hi and we must behave," declared Dum, reading over Dee"s shoulder. "I don"t know whether I am going to behave or not. That Mr.
Parker gets on my nerves. He"s too clean, somehow. I"m mighty afraid I"m going to roll him down the mountain."
"Mis" Carter is fixin" up a lot for the gent," said Susan, who had been busily engaged with her wash tub while the girls were talking, "if it"s Mr. Hiram G. Parker you is a-speakin" of. She done say he is a very high-up pusson. I do believe it was all on account of him that she done made Miss Douglas look after her hide so keerful this week."
"Why, does mother know he is coming up?" asked Helen. "She never told me. Nan, did you know he was coming?"
Nan hadn"t known, but she had a great light break on her mind when she heard that her mother knew he was to come: Mr. Tucker had certainly used this visit of Mr. Parker"s to persuade her mother to give up the trip to White Sulphur.
"No! I never heard a word of it," Nan answered sedately but her eyes were dancing and it was with difficulty that she restrained a giggle.
How could her mother be so easily influenced? She must consider Mr.
Parker very well worth while to stay at camp just to see him. That was the reason for all of this extra washing and ironing Susan had on hand.
Nan loved her mother devotedly but she had begun to feel that perhaps she was a very--well, to say the least--a very frivolous lady. Nan"s judgment was in a measure more mature than Helen"s although Helen was almost two years her senior. Where Helen loved, she loved without any thought of the loved one"s having any fault. She wondered now that her mother should have known of Mr. Parker"s coming without mentioning it, but as for that little lady"s dressing up to see this society man, why, that was just as it should be. She had absolutely no inkling of her mother"s maneuvering to push Douglas toward a successful debut. Susan"s intimation that Douglas was to preserve her complexion for Mr. Parker"s benefit was simply nonsense. Susan was after all a very foolish colored girl who had gotten things mixed. Douglas was to protect her delicate blond skin for all society, not for any particular member of it.
The train arrived bearing many week-enders and among them Zebedee and the precious Mr. Hiram G. Parker, looking his very fittest in a pearl gray suit with mauve tie and socks and a Panama hat that had but recently left the block. Zebedee could not help smiling at the fine wardrobe trunk that his companion had brought and comparing it with his own small grip with its changes of linen packed in the bottom and the boxes of candy for Tweedles and Page squeezed on top.
"Thank Heaven, I don"t have a reputation to keep up!" he said to himself.
The wardrobe trunk was not very large, not much more bulky than a suitcase but it had to be carried up the mountain by Josephus and its owner seemed to be very solicitous that it should be stood on the proper end.
"One"s things get in an awful mess from these mountain roads. A wardrobe trunk should be kept upright, otherwise even the most skillful packing cannot insure one that trousers will not be mussed and coats literally ruined."
Mr. Tucker felt like laughing outright but he had an ax to grind and Hiram G. Parker was to turn the wheel, so he bridled his inclination. He had asked the society man to be his guest for the week-end, intimating that he had a favor to ask of him. Parker accepted, as he had an idea he would, since the summer was none too full of invitations with almost no one in town. His position in the bank held him in town and he must also hold the position, since it was through it he was enabled to belong to all the clubs and to have pressed suits for all occasions. He had no idea what the favor was but he liked to keep in with these newspaper chaps since it was through the newspapers, when all was told, that he had attained his success, and through the society columns of those dailies that he kept in the public eye. He liked Jeffry Tucker, too, for himself. There was something so spontaneous about him. With all of Hiram Parker"s society veneer there was a human being somewhere down under the varnish and a heart, not very big, but good of its kind.
On the train en route to Greendale Mr. Tucker had divulged what that favor was. He led up to it adroitly so that when he finally reached it Mr. Parker was hardly aware of the fact that he had arrived.
"Long list of debutantes this season, I hear," he started out with, handing an excellent cigar to his guest.
"Yes, something appalling!" answered Mr. Parker, settling himself comfortably in the smoker after having taken off his coat and produced a pocket hanger to keep that garment in all the glory of a recent pressing. "I see many hen parties in prospect. There won"t be near enough beaux to go round."
"So I hear, especially since the militia has been ordered to the border.
So many dancing men are in the Blues. I heard today that young Lane is off. He is Robert Carter"s a.s.sistant and since Carter has been out of the running has been endeavoring to keep the business going. I fancy it will be a blow to the Carters that he has had to go."
"Yes, too bad! Quite a dancing man! He will be missed in the germans."
Jeffry Tucker smiled as he had been thinking the Carters might miss the a.s.sistance that Lane rendered their father, but since Mr. Parker"s mind ran more on germans than on business that was, after all, what he was bringing him up to Greendale for.
"Lewis Somerville has enlisted, too."
"You don"t say! I had an idea when he left West Point he would be quite an addition to Richmond society."
"I think Mrs. Carter thought he would be of great a.s.sistance to her eldest daughter," said Mr. Machiavelli Tucker.
"Oh, I hadn"t heard that one of Robert Carter"s daughters was to make her debut. I haven"t seen her name on the list. Is she a good looker?"
"Lovely and very sweet! I think it is a pity for her to come out and not be a success, but her mother is determined that she shall enter the ring this winter."
"Yes, it is a pity. This will be a bad year for buds. There are already so many of them and such a dearth of beaux I have never beheld. I don"t care how good-looking a girl is, she is going to have a hard time having a good time this year," and the expert sighed, thinking of the work ahead of him in entertaining debutantes. He was not so young as he had been and there were evenings when he rather longed to get into slippers and dressing gown and let himself go, but a leader must be on the job constantly or someone else would usurp his place. Many debutantes and a few society men meant he must redouble his activities.
"I hope you will be nice to this girl, Hi. She is a splendid creature.
Since her father has been sick, she has taken the burden of the whole family on her shoulders. All of the girls help and the second one, Helen, is doing wonders, too--in fact, all of them are wonders."
"So----" thought the leader of germans, "we are coming to the favor.