Chapter 17

"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 scrapping, 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 assume 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 nobody 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."

"I'm so sorry for poor Miss Salisbury," observed Pickering, lazily watching Jasper's efforts.

"Well, you needn't be," retorted Alexia; "she's very fond of me, Miss Salisbury is, and I don't in the least know what she'd do if I left her school. But I never shall go away, for I just dote on her."

"It looks like it," said Pickering, with a laugh.

"Well, I do," declared Alexia; "she's my very sweetest friend, except Polly Pepper, so there!"

"Oh, dear me! I don't know what next to say," cried Jasper, holding off the notice at arm's length, and scowling at it dreadfully.

"You ought to see your face, Jasper," cried Alexia. "Dear me! it's positively awful."

"Well, it's not half as bad as I feel," said Jasper, "with this terrible old notice weighing me down."

"'Attention'," drawled Pickering, reading the two lines. "'You are requested to appear--'"

"Hold on!" cried Jasper, turning over the notice. "Who told you to read it out, pray tell?"

"I'm on the Committee, I'd have you know," said Pickering coolly.

"Well, we'll pitch you out," said Jasper, "neck and heels, if you don't take care. Well, but really this is awful work." He whirled over the notice again, and glared at it savagely.

"Why don't we just say, 'A Cooking Club is to be formed'?" proposed Polly, "and----"

"Oh, that will be elegant," interrupted Alexia, clapping her hands. "Oh, Polly, you write it."

"Oh, I couldn't," said Polly, drawing back.

"Yes, Polly, do," begged Jasper.

"Oh, no, you write it," said Polly.

"Well, then, you tell me what to say," said Jasper, laughing.

"She did," said Alexia impatiently. "A Cooking Club is to be formed'--didn't you hear her?"

"I have that," said Jasper, scribbling away on a fresh piece of paper. "Now what next?"

"Go on, Polly," said Alexia.

"Well--oh, 'Will you please come to the first meeting?'"

"'And see how you like it,'" finished Alexia; "that's just elegant--do write it down, Jasper."

"You may be sure I will," cried Jasper, vastly pleased that he was to be helped out, and finishing it all up with great energy. "Well, what else?" and he poised his pen in air and looked at Polly.

"Why, isn't that enough?" said Polly, a little pucker beginning to come on her forehead.

"I should think so," said Pickering; "it tells all the story."

"And they will come, you may be sure," said Jasper, holding off the notice again, this time for everybody's inspection, "and that's the main thing."

"And now we can all begin to write them," said Alexia, in great satisfaction, seizing her pen, which she had dropped. "Do put it in the middle of the table, Jasper, where we can all see."

"Wait till I write a good one," said Jasper, beginning on a fresh sheet of paper. "I was hurrying so to get it all down; you can hardly read it." So he wrote it out in his best hand, then propped the notice up against the book-rack. "Now begin," he said.

"Let's race," cried Alexia, already scrawling the first words at a great rate.

"Oh, dear me! we shan't do it decently then," said Polly, in alarm. "I mean, I shan't, if we race."

"Nor I, either," said Jasper.

"Well, I'm not going to race, anyway," declared Pickering, making slow, lazy strokes with his pen; "it's quite bad enough to have to write these odious things, without breaking one's neck over them."

"Well, don't let's talk," said Alexia, seeing that she couldn't have any part in the conversation since all her mind had to go into her task. "Oh, dear me! I left out the dot to my 'i,' and misery! there's a blot! It was all because I was listening to you, Pickering Dodge."

"Well, we'll all be as still as mice now," said Polly; so no sound was heard save the scratching of pens over the paper, as the work went gayly on.

"Oh, isn't it too bad that we can't any of us find that ten-dollar bill Joel lost at the garden party?" broke out Alexia, when this sort of thing had proceeded for some time.

"Ugh!" cried Polly, and her pen slipped, making an awful scratch and just spoiling the best notice she had written.

Jasper raised his head and cast a warning glance over the table at Alexia, but it was too late.

"I do believe we shall find it some time," said Polly, scraping away with the ink-eraser and only making matters worse.

"Take care, Polly; the ink is too fresh," warned Jasper. "Wait until it dries."

"Well, I've smeared it all up now," said Polly, leaning back in her chair and viewing her work with despair.

"Perhaps it can be fixed," said Alexia, overwhelmed with distress and leaning forward to see the worst. "I 'most know it can; let me try, Polly."

"No, no, Alexia, I wouldn't," said Jasper; "it's quite bad enough already."

"Well, maybe I can do it," persisted Alexia, "if I could only try."

"You may try," said Polly, pushing the paper toward her, when she saw Alexia's face, "but it's no matter anyway, I'll write another." And she had already begun it when Alexia threw down the ink-eraser.

"It's no sort of use," she said, "and I've made a shocking hole in the paper. Oh, dear me!" and she looked so utterly miserable that Polly's brow cleared and she began to laugh.

"Dear me!" she said, "it isn't a bit of matter, and see, I've ever so much done already on this. And I do believe we shall find that ten-dollar note sometime. I do verily believe so, Alexia."

"So do I," cried Jasper heartily.

Pickering said nothing; he didn't really believe the ten-dollar bill would ever be found, having helped Jasper to ransack so many possible and impossible places, but he wasn't going to say so, and thus add to the general gloom.

"And I think it was awfully nice of Joel to do that dreadful work over Mr. King's old books, and earn the money," said Alexia.

Polly looked up with a smile. "Wasn't it?" she cried radiantly.

"And Father says Joe does the lists so well," said Jasper heartily; "he sticks at it every day like a leech, and there can't anything get him off to play till the hour is over."

"Well, I don't see how he can," said Alexia, drawing a long breath. "Dear me, it would just tire me to death. Why, Polly Pepper!" Alexia threw clown her pen and stared at her. "When is the first meeting to be?"

"Why, you know," said Polly, writing away, laboriously; "next Wednesday evening, of course."

"Well, we don't say so," said Alexia. "How in the world are they to know?"

The other members of the Committee stopped work immediately and glanced ruefully at the little pile of notices accumulating in the middle of the table.

"We can never write those all over," began Polly tragically.

Pickering put out a long hand and picked out from the pile the one he had written.

"I shall just write, 'Wednesday evening, July 21st,' down in one corner," he said.

"Oh, goody!" exclaimed Alexia, her face brightening; "I shall do mine so"--pulling out her scrawls from the heap of notices.

"But we don't tell where the meeting is to be," said Jasper after they had all fallen to work again.

At this second fright no one seemed to be able to speak. It was Alexia who first found her voice.

"Why not put it in the other corner?" she said.

"And that just balances," said Jasper, holding one of his notices up when the two additions had been made, "so it really looks better than ever."

"But we mustn't make any more blunders," observed Pickering wisely, "for we haven't any extra corners to go to now."

"Oh, we aren't going to make any," declared Alexia, "and we will soon be through, thank goodness!"--as the pens set up lively work once more.

"I hope so." Polly gave a long sigh. "Oh, dear me! it wouldn't be one-half so hard to do cooking for the Club, as to write a single one of these things."

XXV

JACK PARISH

"Grandpapa!" Joel came in with a shout, rushed around the room two or three times, and finally came up to the big writing-table, quite blown.

"Dear me!" exclaimed old Mr. King, laying down his pen, "have you really got through, Joe?"

"Grandpapa," said Joel, his black eyes shining, and bobbing over his head to get a good look into the old gentleman's face, "she's asked him, she really has!"

"Who?" asked Mr. King, very much puzzled.

"Mrs. Sterling," said Joel, in a tone of the greatest satisfaction. Then he began to dance again, snapping his brown fingers to keep time.

"When you come out of that war dance, Joel," said old Mr. King, leaning back in his big chair to laugh at him, "perhaps you'll have the goodness to tell me whom you are talking about all this time."

Joel stopped his mad career and ran up to the old gentleman's side.

"Why Jack Parish--I thought you knew, Grandpapa," he added reproachfully.

"I suppose I might have known if I'd stopped to consider that you've talked your Parish boy every day since the little affair on the pond," said Mr. King, still laughing. "Well, and so Mrs. Sterling has invited your friend, Joel, to some festivity, I suppose, eh?"

"Yes," said Joel, "she has"--his satisfaction returning--"it's a supper at her house, to-morrow night, Grandpapa." He leaned over to bring his brown cheek close to the one under the white hair. "Just think of that!"

"Whew!" ejaculated the old gentleman, "and she hasn't had company for ten years!"

"Well, she's going to have us, every single one in the Comfort committee," declared Joel decidedly, "and she asked Jack, most particularly; she did, Grandpapa--she really did. May I go down and tell him now? May I, Grandpapa?" he cried eagerly.

"Why, if your mother says so, I suppose--" began Mr. King.

"She says I may go, if you think best," cried Joel, hanging to the arms of the big chair and having hard work to curb his impatience. "Oh, Grandpapa, please hurry and say yes."

Instead of complying with this demand, the old gentleman leaned back in his chair and steadily gazed into space while he revolved something in his mind. At last, when Joel thought he couldn't brook the delay another minute, Mr. King whirled suddenly around in his chair.

"I tell you what it is, Joel, you and I will go down to see your friend ourselves."

"Oh, Grandpapa!" Joel gave a leap, and seized Mr. King's arm with both hands. "Right away now?" he cried, with sparkling eyes.

"Right away now," declared old Mr. King, getting out of his chair; "that is, as soon as we can make ourselves presentable for our walk. Goodness me, Joe, what a whirlwind you are!"--bursting into another laugh.

Joel didn't care what he was called so long as he was really going to see Jack Parish and carry him the wonderful invitation, and all the way down to the little grocer's on Common Street he just bubbled over with happiness, till everybody who passed the two felt a glow at the heart at the merry comrades: and many were the backward glances cast at the old, white-haired gentleman of stately mien, with a chubby-faced boy of the jolliest appearance hanging to his hand.

"Well, well, well, and so here we are." Old Mr. King looked up curiously at the little sign above the door--"Ichabod Parish, Grocer"--then down over the shop windows overrunning with canned goods, and, to finish up, an outside stall on which jostled and overcrowded each other every description of vegetable in the market, from a cabbage down. A fat, red-faced man with a big apron that had been white earlier in the day, came out of the shop and stood by the stall.

"Anything in our line to-day, sir?" he said. He had a little pad of paper in one hand and a pencil in the other.

"Well, yes," said old Mr. King, with a twinkle in his eye, for by this time he perceived some lines along the fat cheeks that showed very plainly the habit of smiles running up and down in them. "I've come for a boy, if you please."

"A boy?" said the fat, red-faced man, laughing, till the round cheeks were all wrinkled up. "Well, now, I take it, you're joking, sir."

"Oh, no, I'm not," said old Mr. King very seriously, but the other man had been just as observing in his way, and had seen the twinkle in the keen eyes. So now he laughed some more and waited patiently for the joke to be explained.

"I take it you have a boy named Jack, hereabout," said Mr. King presently.

All the wrinkles dropped suddenly out of the fat, red cheeks. "He hain't done nothin' wrong, Jack hain't?" gasped the man.

"Oh, Grandpapa, tell him what we've come for," cried Joel, twitching Mr. King's hand, and quite aghast to see the suffering in Jack's father. "Do, please, Grandpapa."

Old Mr. King was rapidly exclaiming: "No, no; bless you, did you think I'd come at you in such a way? Why, this boy here"--thrusting Joel forward--"has got an invitation for him. Now, then Joel, my boy, speak up."

And Joel did speak up; and in a minute they were all there in the little shop, and the fat grocer was bustling around to work a chair out from behind the counter. But as the big store cat and several parcels were on it, it took a bit of time. Meanwhile, old Mr. King sat down upon a box of soap, while Joel hung over his shoulder.

A woman came in with a jug to be filled with molasses, and a small girl for a box of matches. But the little grocer told them to wait, and after he had placed the chair and gotten Mr. King off from the soap-box and into it, he bustled to a door at the head of the shop.

"Ma," he cried, putting his head into the room to which it opened, "do you know where Jack is?"

"He's upstairs," said a voice, evidently "Ma's."

"Well, tell him to come down," said the fat grocer.

"All right, Ichabod."

"Jack's to home," announced the grocer, coming back with the air of imparting a piece of news, just as much as if every word had not been heard. "Well, now, Mis. Jones, I'll fill your jug." He took it from her and she settled herself comfortably, during the slow process, to watch the stately, white-haired figure in the chair to her heart's content; her example being followed by the small girl who had, of course, been obliged to wait for the box of matches.

A pair of feet could be heard coming through the room just mentioned.

"I don't know what your Pa wants you for," said a woman's voice; "most likely for an errand."

So Jack, free from his sling, for Doctor Fisher had found him surprisingly quick at recovery, bolted through the doorway, and into the shop, and without a bit of warning brought up against old Mr. Horatio King and Joel.

"Great Scott!" he cried, scared out of his usual shyness.

"Yes," said Joel, sociably bobbing his face into Jack's, "I've come to ask you to supper. Mrs. Sterling told me to, most particularly, you know."

"Dear me, Joe!" exclaimed old Mr. King, "do give it to him more slowly"; for Jack's head of light hair was wagging from one to the other of the visitors in great distress.

"I am," said Joel; "awful slow, Grandpapa."

"It doesn't look much like it," said the old gentleman, bursting into a laugh. The fat grocer over at the molasses barrel, looked across anxiously at the group, and for once in his life wished Mrs. Jones, although one of his best customers, anywhere but in his shop.

"Well, try again, Joel," said Mr. King. So Joel began once more, and before long, Jack Parish understood fairly that Mrs. Sterling had actually invited him to supper on the following night with the Comfort committee, just as if he were not the son of Ichabod Parish, the little grocer on Common Street, but were one of the rich boys of Joel Pepper's set.

"Pa," he shouted (he wanted some one of his own family to help understand this puzzle), "do come here."

The fat grocer, hearing this cry, could stand it no longer trying to stamp out his curiosity; so deserting the molasses barrel and forgetting to turn the spigot, he bore off the jug.

"There, Mis. Jones, there you are"--depositing it with a thump on the counter, and waddled over to his son and the visitors.

When he comprehended the matter, as after an infinite deal of pains he did, his astonishment knew no bounds. It absolutely struck him speechless, and there he stood in the middle of the little shop, lost to the fact that he was a small grocer on an obscure street. He was the father of Jack, hitherto obliged to go with boys of the neighborhood, not of specially nice families, with manners and aims to match, now--oh, joy!--with a chance for something better, that might reach to unknown heights. He might even become an alderman! The little grocer's breast heaved with delight, but even in that blissful moment, his first thought was of his wife.

"Won't your mother be proud, Jack!" he made out to utter.

"Your molasses is all runnin' out," proclaimed the small girl who was waiting for the box of matches.

And Jack springing to help his father, who bounded to the molasses barrel, old Mr. King and Joel took themselves off without any further embarrassment to the little grocer, who surely never could in all this world express his gratitude as he wanted to.

"Be at my house to-morrow afternoon, and we'll go over together," said Joel, with longing glances at the center of bustle around the molasses barrel.

"Oh, Grandpapa, how I do wish I could have staid and helped clean up!" Joel burst out, as they left the shop.

"Oh, my goodness, Joel!" exclaimed old Mr. King; "such a messy job! How can you!"

"It would have been such fun," mourned Joel, wishing he could have free access to just such a small grocer's shop, and thinking that Jack was the luckiest fellow alive.

"When I grow up, I'm going to have a shop like that," he declared, after marching on in silence down the next block and surveying with favor all the surroundings of the narrow street.

"I thought you were going to sell tin, like your Mr. Biggs, of Badgertown," said Mr. King mischievously.

Joel hung his head. "I was, but I think a shop would be nicer after all; you can have everything in it, you know, Grandpapa."

"Even molasses," put in Mr. King. "Well, I wouldn't decide the matter just now, Joel, my boy--which you will be when you are grown up. There's plenty of time yet ahead of you."

Jack Parish, with his hair carefully oiled by his anxious mother, and his very best clothes on, a circumstance calculated to invest him with dread and rob him of every bit of comfort to begin with, presented himself at Mr. King's mansion on the next afternoon. His countenance was long, and he looked so worried that Joel, rushing out to meet him, involuntarily ejaculated, "Oh, dear me!" in dismay.