had thrown her cape over her shoulders and hastened in the twilight through the hedge to tell Mary Amber.

Mary Amber, trying to conceal her inward doubts, had congratulated Miss[12] Marilla and promised to come over the first thing in the morning to help get dinner. Promised also, after much urging, almost with tears on the part of Miss Marilla, to stay and help eat the dinner afterward in company with Miss Marilla and the young lieutenant. From this part of her promise Mary Amber’s soul recoiled, for she had no belief that the young leopard with whom she had played at the age of ten could have changed his spots in the course of a few years, or even covered them with a silver bar. But Mary Amber soon saw that her presence at that dinner was an intrinsic part of Miss Marilla’s joy in the anticipation of the dinner; and, much as she disliked the position of being flung at the young lieutenant in this way, she promised. After all, what did it matter what he thought of her anyway, since she had no use for him? And then, she could always quietly[13] freeze him whenever Miss Marilla’s back was turned. And Mary Amber could freeze with her hazel eyes when she tried.

[12]

[13]

So quite early in the morning Miss Marilla and Mary Amber began a cheerful stir in Miss Marilla’s big sunny kitchen, and steadily, appetizingly, there grew an array of salads and pies and cakes and puddings and cookies and doughnuts and biscuits and pickles and olives and jellies; while a great bird stuffed to bursting went through the seven stages of its final career to the oven.

But now it was five o’clock. The bird with brown and shining breast was waiting in the oven, “done to a turn;” mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, succotash, and onions had received the finishing-touches, and had only to be “taken up.” Cranberries and pickles and celery and jelly gave the final[14] touches to a perfect table, and the sideboard fairly groaned under its load of pies and cake. One might have thought a whole regiment were to dine with Miss Marilla Chadwick that day, from the sights and smells that filled the house. Up in the spare room the fire glowed in a Franklin heater, and a geranium glowed in a west window between spotless curtains to welcome the guest; and now there was nothing left for the two women to do but the final anxiety.

[14]

Mary Amber had her part in that, perhaps even more than her hostess and friend; for Mary Amber was jealous for Miss Marilla, and 

 Prev. P 4/64 next