The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted Part 30

"Don't let me ever catch you turning prig, Frieda Lange," advised Hannah. "And now don't ask me what a prig is, for I don't know in German, and there's no way here to find out. What else are you going to have for eats, Catherine?"

Catherine shuddered. "I suppose you'd think I was a prig if I told you how I hate that word 'eats,' so I won't tell you! The chief thing to-night is the birthday cake, of course. And Inga is going to make grape-fruit sherbet. It's so nice with a little tang of tartness to it, you know. And we'll have olive sandwiches with the salad and coffee. You can all help with those!"

"It's such fun to help," said Alice. "At home there are so many of us, and no maid at all, you know, and we have awfully jolly times, really.

Mother is cook and she has a different scullery-maid for each meal. And the rest of us divide up the rooms, and so on. The boys are great workers, too. Even little Jack brings in kindlings and wipes the silver.

He plays the knives are men, and the forks their wives and the spoons the little children."

"O, so did I, always," cried Catherine. "And it used to worry me dreadfully not to know positively that the proper couples were together.

Once I tied them all neatly with different colored silks, but Mother didn't approve. Through with the nuts so soon, Frieda? Then you can begin on the sandwiches."

"Ach! The b.u.t.ter is too difficult!"

"Cream it, then. So!" and Alice ill.u.s.trated. "I'll go to work on these, too, while Hannah puts away the dishes, for I don't know where they belong."

"All right," said Catherine. "But please don't talk, any of you, for a few minutes. I don't want to lose a word that any of you say, and I'm afraid the cake may suffer."

Dr. Helen stopped at the door and looked in at the group of silent workers. They all threw her kisses, and she went smiling on her way.

"I wish I had four of my own," she thought to herself. "How the other mothers must be missing them! Four more interesting and delightful girls I never have known. Hannah has grown more mature since I saw her last, and Frieda is distinctly unique. Alice is the kind you can tie to. But I really think, without prejudice, my Catherine is a shade sweeter and steadier and more responsible than all the rest!"

By five o'clock the house was all ready. The decorations were great ma.s.ses of goldenrod which Bert and Polly had gathered. Frieda had suggested tying them with bows of red ribbon, whereat the others had shrieked with horror and tried to Americanize her color sense a little.

She approved of the birthday cake, and was interested in the big tin circle which held fifty candle-sockets, and would slip over the cake as it rested on a tray. Winding this circle with smilax proved a task just to Frieda's mind, and she worked at it with Hannah's help, while Alice and Catherine planned the "recreation" for the evening.

"I'm so glad," said Catherine, stretching a little, "that we don't have to get the Rest ready for them. Refreshments and Recreation are enough to provide!"

"You need the Rest yourself," said Hannah. "I think it was a shame that out-of-town call had to come for your mother this afternoon. She would have enjoyed these things, and she looked so tired."

"I know. But I'm so glad she could go away and feel sure I'd carry things through. You don't know what a comfort that is to me! Whenever I feel discouraged about things, I always pluck up spirit by remembering that I'm really useful to her. I couldn't practise medicine myself, you know, but there have been lots of things Mother couldn't have done, if I hadn't been here to help at home. I wish she could be here this afternoon, though, for she is so clever at foolishnesses like this."

"You're clever enough at it, yourself," growled Hannah. "I don't see how you can do it. You and Alice make me sick with envy. You can cook and manage and tutor and make rhymes and everything, and I can't do much of anything!"

"How about playing the violin?" suggested Alice.

"I can't do that," said Frieda suddenly. "I cannot do one thing. O, there comes Dr. Helen, after all! We were wis.h.i.+ng you were here," and Frieda sprang up and ran to meet the doctor. The others followed her and in an instant Dr. Helen found her arms full of welcoming girls.

"I met a messenger on the way, telling me that I need not come, and I'll admit it was a relief. I knew you'd get on all right, but I did want a finger in the pie. There! You may put my hat and coat away, Hannah, if you will, and I'll get right to work. How prettily you are putting that smilax on, Frieda!"

"That's right to cheer Frieda up, Mother," said Catherine. "She was just saying that she couldn't do anything."

"Frieda was saying that? I thought you embroidered that wonderful ap.r.o.n yourself?"

"O, of course, but that is only _Handarbeit_," said Frieda.

"Hand work is highly valued these days," remarked the doctor. "If you could teach Catherine to sew so well, Frieda, I should be even prouder of her than I am now. But it must not distress you when you find that there is some one thing you can't do. No one does everything well. It's one of my pet theories that for every talent one has, there is some other he hasn't. It's part of the balancing of the world. Think how very disagreeable it would be if there were one person who could do everything, and some one else who could do nothing at all."

"Don't you think there are some people who can't do anything?" asked Alice.

"Not really. Some people never seem to find their special line. I've known people so perverse they wouldn't do what they could, simply because they would have preferred something else. But I'm a firm believer that every one has a gift."

"Is _Handarbeit_ a gift?" asked Frieda, looking with respect at the graceful vine twining over the shoulder of her blue ap.r.o.n.

"Indeed it is," said Dr. Helen. "And it is a gift more widely distributed than everybody knows. If you can, do help Catherine to discover that it is one of hers!"

"She helped me find out that I liked to sew," said Hannah. "I hated the sight of a needle before I went to Germany. But I didn't know you hated sewing, Catherine."

"I don't," Catherine answered tranquilly. "But there are always so many other things to do, and there is so much to read. It makes me s.h.i.+ver to think that I have only three years more at Dexter, and I haven't begun to read all I want to. I'd like to move over to the library and stay there."

"That's a serious criticism of your college life, Catherine," said Dr.

Helen.

Hannah giggled. "I suppose there is a library at Dexter, but I was there a whole term, and never went inside it once!"

Everybody laughed. "Well," said Dr. Helen, "that was the other extreme.

But I suppose if you young people were all-wise and learned, there'd be no point in sending you to college at all. And the world would be much more monotonous if it were filled with grown-ups! What a conflagration those red candles will make, Frieda!"

Catherine had left her seat and gone across the room to the poetry section of the bookcase, and was now turning the pages of a small green book.

"Listen to this Singing Leaf, Mother!

"'The wisest finding that I have Is very young, no doubt, Yet many a man must needs grow old Before he finds it out.

"'How happily it comes about-- And I was never told!-- That we must all be young awhile Before we _can_ be old!'"

Dr. Helen laughed. "That is certainly very appropriate, and a good close to our rather sermonizing talk. I suppose fifty-year-old birthday parties should lead one to serious thinking! But now show me how far your nonsense rhyming has progressed. It's nearly supper time."

The Three R's were early comers and late stayers. Before the summer twilight was over, they had gathered in force. Alice, counting, suddenly said:

"Why, there are just forty-nine. Wouldn't it be fun if just one more should come?"

"Who isn't here?" asked some one. "Perhaps there will be one other, though almost everybody has come."

"The Judge himself isn't here yet," said Dr. Harlow. "He'll make the fiftieth. There he is! Let's line up, and give him a royal welcome!"

The suggestion "took," and the little judge came up the walk, bowing on all sides, and smiling. As he reached the door and shook hands with Dr.

Harlow and Dr. Helen, he looked about him peeringly. "Where's my girl?"

he asked.

"Here I am," said Catherine, "and here is a little souvenir for you, Judge Arthur, with wishes for many returns of the day." She presented with a flourish, a huge feather duster adorned with a great green bow.

That was the signal and the others at once produced parcels of all sizes and shapes, and bestowed them upon the judge, who opened them under a rapid fire of friendly wit.

The special form of recreation offered for the evening was called "Strange Compounds." Catherine had taken the idea from the nonsense verses which had been spreading over the country as generally as the limericks of a few years before. The guests grouped themselves at little tables, and some, with shears and pages cut from old natural histories, geographies or poultry and live stock journals, created grotesque ill.u.s.trations for the verses descriptive of the hippopotamustang and the kangarooster and other strange beasts which Catherine and Alice concocted during the afternoon. Others labored over historical combinations and the deeds of Bathrobespierre were sung in limpid strains, and the plaintive history of Old Black Joan of Archaeology set every one off into a gale of mirth. The Three R's had done so many foolish things together in the many years since their beginning as a club, that they were ready to laugh before a joke was thought of, and in that atmosphere of appreciation the frailest wit was bound to flourish.

Mrs. Osgood headed a party of gardeners whose attempts at grafting produced such startling results as cro-custards and gerani-umbrellas.

When some one requested help in developing the theme of a disaster, Judge Arthur shouted from the animal table that he had attempted to draw a wild-cat-astrophe and the picture would probably do for both!

Just in time to save them all from mental collapse, the white-gowned maidens brought in the dainty salad, sandwiches and cups of fragrant coffee. Then the n.o.ble birthday cake, wreathed in scarlet flame, was set before the judge, the candles blown out with good wishes, and the cake cut and served with the ice.

Dr. Harlow rose to announce that the prize for the most complete compound was given to Mr. Kittredge, who had conceived of a "pigeon-toad, with a lovely long dove-tail, and a pot-pied waistcoat ringed and streaked, and a sweet dove-cot-ton veil." Frieda and Hannah came solemnly into the room, bearing a crate, from the top of which appeared the head of a rooster, with a big bow of ribbon around its neck. They set it down before the minister amid the shouts of the a.s.sembled company.