CHAPTER XIV

HENDERSON PALACE

ALL day Saturday the members of the Jinks Club were busy making their “floats.” Delight came in triumph, pushing a wicker baby-carriage ahead of her.

“Mrs. Phillips let me have it,” she said, “because she says the baby uses the go-cart ’most all the time now, anyway.”

In the carriage she had many rolls of tissue paper, and a big bundle of tarlatan, and gilt paper and wands, and all sorts of fascinating things. Delight loved to cut and paste, and long before the others began their work, she had flung off hat and coat, and was singing to herself as she made pink and white paper roses.

Kitty, too, was industrious, and she sat in a corner and sewed mermaids’ tails diligently, but she was able to do her share of the talking as well.

“What’s your float going to be, Flip?” she asked, not very clearly, by reason of some pins between her teeth.

“Now, don’t you all laugh at me,” began Flip, looking a little uncertain, “but as King says his float is historical, mine’s going to be, too. Mine’s the ‘Declaration of Independence.’”

“Laugh!” exclaimed Kitty; “I should say we wouldn’t! Why, that’ll be grand, Flip. How are you going to do it?”

“Well; it’s all done—that is, it’s partly done. I haven’t fixed up the wheelbarrow yet.”

It was hard not to laugh at Flip—he was so earnest, and yet so humorous of face.

“Wait, I’ll show you,” he said; and then, from an adjoining room in the barn, he wheeled in a broad, old-fashioned wheelbarrow, on which sat a Roger’s Group!

“That’s it,” he said, proudly. “I found that old bunch of statesmen up in the attic, and Mother said I could use it if I liked. Now, I say, when that dinky old wheelbarrow is all draped with a flag it’ll look pretty fine, hey?”

“Gorgeous!” said Midget, with enthusiasm. “Your float is all right, Flip. You just wind those legs and handles and the wheel with red, white, and blue bunting, and there you are!”

“Well, I thought I’d paint the wheel. Blue rim with white stars on it, and red and white spokes, hey?”

“Yes, better plan,” said King. “Stuff’ll get all twisted in the wheel. Now, here’s my express wagon, and here’s my North Pole. Who’ll help me build an Arctic Region?”

“I will,” said Delight, dropping her paper flowers into the baby-carriage. “I can do mine afterward. Let me help you, King. I know just how.”

“You’re a brick, Flossy Flouncy!” exclaimed King, as he watched Delight’s deft little fingers pile fleecy cotton batting round his North Pole in most realistic snowdrifts.

“I can’t do anything on my float to-day,” announced Kitty. “I have to get the mermaids done first, and they’re such a bother.”

“You make them too carefully,” said Dorothy, as she watched Kitty patiently sewing spangles over the green fish-tails that were to transform Rosamond’s dolls into mermaids.

“I don’t care,” said painstaking Kitty, “I like to have them nice. And Delight will help me fix the float, won’t you?”

“’Course I will. We’ll all help each other. Where’s your float, Dorothy?”

“Well, I’m going to take Mother’s old flower-stand, the kind with shelves, you know. She doesn’t use it now, and she says I may have it. And I’m just going to set it on a flat platform with wheels; Flip says he’ll make me one; and then just cram it all over with flowers. That’s all.”

“It will be lovely!” declared Delight; “there’s nothing so pretty as flowers.”

Under Miss Hart’s wise tuition, and because she was truly trying to be less selfish, Delight was becoming a veritable little sunbeam. Everybody liked her, and as she tried to be sweet and helpful, she found it was not difficult, after all.

And now, in all this business of fancy fixings and decorations, Delight’s nimble fingers and good taste were of great assistance.

Marjorie was working away at her “birthday cake.” It was a large pasteboard bandbox, round, of course, and low. She was covering it with white crêpe paper, and making tiny festoons of the paper round the edge to look like fancy icing.

On top she pasted gilt letters, which read, “To Miss Larkin, from the Jinks Club.” Inside were to be the presents, of course.

“But I don’t want you other Jinksies to give presents to Miss Larkin,” said Marjorie. “There’s no reason why you should, you know. Just us Maynards will give the presents; and we’re not going to give much.”

“Oh, pooh,” said Flip; “let us chip in, too; it won’t hurt us to give some little thing. Mother’ll get a handkerchief or something for me to give, I know.”

“Yes, let us,” said Delight. “In fact, my mother spoke of it herself. She said she’d get a little book for me to give.”

“Of course, I’ll give something, too,” said Dorothy Adams. “I’d like to. And I think it would be nice if we gave things to each other, too. It would fill up the pie—cake, I mean.”

“Ho!” said Flip; “’tisn’t our birthdays, Dot.”

“I don’t care,” said Dorothy, stoutly. She rarely made a suggestion, but when she did, she stood by it. “I mean just some little thing—a paper doll or a hair-ribbon.”

“Well,” said King, “I’d just love to have a paper doll; and as for a hair-ribbon, I need one awfully!”

Then they all laughed, but Dorothy would not be laughed down.

“Well,” she said, “your few little presents for Miss Larkin will just rattle round in that great big pie.”

“You’re right, Dot,” said Kitty, who generally saw matters very sensibly. “Let’s give each other presents, only not everybody to everybody else. I mean, let’s each give one present, and get one present.”

“Oh, Kit, you mix me up so,” groaned her brother. “Tell us more ’splicitly.”

“All right,” said Kitty, undisturbed, “here’s what I mean. S’pose Mops gives to Delight, and Delight to King, and King to Dorothy, and Dorothy to me, and me—I, to Flip, and then Flip to Midget—that makes one apiece all round, doesn’t it?”

“Katharine Maynard, you’re a genius!” declared her brother; “you’ve set my head whizzing, but I grasp your idea. Now, let me see, who is it gives me a paper doll?”

“Delight does,” returned Kitty, calmly; “and if you tease so, she _will_ give you a paper doll, and it would serve you right, too!”

“Yes, it would,” said King, so meekly, that they all laughed. “And on whom do I bestow a diamond necklace, or some such little trinket?”

“On me,” said Dorothy, promptly; “Kitty said so.”

“All right,” said King, “your scheme, fair maidens, is a winner. Into the pie our gifts we’ll throw—ha, ha, ha, and ho, ho, ho!”

“King, you’re a lovely poet,” said Marjorie, “but won’t you come here now and help me fasten this pie on its wheels?”

“Certingly, certingly, my liege lady; hast any tackerinos?”

“No; but here’s a hammerino. Can’t you find some nails?”

“Ay, ay, in just a jiff!”

And sure enough, in a few moments Marjorie’s big birthday cake sat proudly on a board across an express wagon, which, though a toy, was a good-sized affair.

“Now for the fiddle-de-dees!” cried King, as he picked up a pile of paper roses and strewed them on the cake.

“Oh, King, stop! You’ll spoil it!” cried Marjorie, rescuing her treasures from her teasing brother. “But I wish you would help me put the candle-holders on.”

They had plenty of candle-holders left from Christmas trees, and the next question was, how many they should put on the cake.

“Put ’em all on,” said Flip, without hesitation.

“But there are seven dozen here in the box,” said Marjorie; “that would look as if we thought she was eighty-four years old!”

“She isn’t,” said Kitty, seriously; “so that won’t do.”

Marjorie looked thoughtful.

“I don’t think it’s polite to put the number of her age on,” she said, at last. “We don’t know it, of course, but even if we guess at it, it wouldn’t be polite.”

“No,” agreed Kitty, “you see, we might guess right.”

“I suppose she’s more’n twenty-one,” observed Flip.

“Yes, she is,” declared King. “She’s older than my mother, I know that.”

“Hush, King,” said Midget; “you mustn’t even talk about it. I guess we’ll have to leave the candles off.”

“Then it won’t be a birthday cake at all,” objected Delight.

“Well, I can’t help it,” said Marjorie, sighing; “it’ll have to be a Jack Homer Pie, then. I can’t be impolite to a lady on her own birthday!”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Kitty, slowly; and they all listened, for Kitty had a way of cutting Gordian knots for them. “You see, as we’re all going to get presents, it’s sort of our birthdays, too; not really, but just pretend. So let’s add up all our ages—that’ll make a lot, and then have that many candles. We can explain to Miss Larkin that we don’t mean she’s that old.”

“Be sure to explain that to her, Kit,” said her brother, gravely, after he had made a rapid calculation with the aid of his fingers and thumbs, “for it comes to about seventy!”

“Add in Rosy Posy,” reminded Marjorie. “She can’t be left out of a Maynard celebration.”

“All right; call it seventy-five. Got that many candles, Mops?”

“Yes, more’n that.”

“Well, put on seventy-five, and call it square.”

“But the cake is round,” said Delight, dimpling with fun.

“Oh, Flossy Flouncy, what a wit you are!” cried King. “All right, Mops, let’s bang the seventy-five candle-holders into place, immejit. My, it’s a lot, isn’t it?”

But they were finally all in place, and Marjorie’s float began to look really lovely. She had plenty of paper flowers to decorate with, and when the birthday came, she intended to wreathe the big cake with smilax, and festoon the sides of the float with the same pretty green.

“It isn’t such a lot of work, after all,” said Delight, as, when the noon whistle blew, the children put on their things to go home.

“Poor old Flossy Flouncy,” said King; “how can you say so? You’ve been helping everybody else so much, your own wagon is scarcely touched.”

“Oh, pooh!” said Delight, “I can finish that up this afternoon, or Monday afternoon, after school. What time is the parade, Marjorie?”

“Well, we want to start early, so as to have plenty of time for the celebration afterward. S’pose we say, leave the barn at three o’clock——”

“Oh, don’t say barn!” exclaimed Delight; “it doesn’t sound right. Say leave the——”

“Headquarters,” suggested King. “No; that sounds like a fire brigade. Leave the Castle or the Palace, I’d say.”

“All right,” said Flip; “we’ve always called this place the barn, but we’d just as lieve change. Henderson Palace it is, at your service!”

“That’s better,” said Delight, smiling at him.

“Well, then,” went on Marjorie, “we’ll leave Henderson Palace at three o’clock next Wednesday, and, with our gorgeous floats, we’ll parade down Broad Avenue to Maynard Castle—how’s that?”

“All right,” said Kitty; “then we’ll storm Castle Maynard, and take the fair Lady Larkin captive.”

“If she’s in a good humor,” put in King.

“She’s bound to be, on her birthday,” said Midge. “Well, then we’ll make her and Rosy Posy queens of the feast, and then we’ll all celebrate together.”

“Sounds lovely!” said Dorothy. “And do we wear fancy dresses?”

“Sure!” said King. “Half the fun is in rigging up. We must each match our float, you know. I’ll be an Arctic explorer.”

“You can have Father’s fur motor-coat,” said Flip; “then you’ll look the part first-rate.”

“Good,” said King; “and I know where I can catch a pair of snowshoes. What’ll you be, Delight?”

“A fairy, of course. But can we go through the street in that sort of rigs?”

“Oh, yes,” said Marjorie; “just down Broad Avenue. Everybody knows us. And, anyway, it’s just like the pageant in New York; they went on the streets in fancy clothes.”

“It’s more like the Baby Parade in Asbury Park,” said Dorothy; “I saw that once, and the children wore all sorts of pretty costumes. And they had baby-carriages, decked out with every sort of thing.”

“All right, then,” said Midget, who was vigorously pulling on her gloves; “I guess I’ll fix up my fancy dress this afternoon, and finish up these float things Monday and Tuesday. We’ve time enough, anyway.”

“Yes,” said Delight, “that’s what I said. It doesn’t take long to make floats.” She tucked her arm through Marjorie’s, and the two skipped away, followed by Dorothy and Kitty.

“What have you children been doing all the morning?” asked Miss Larkin, as they were all seated at the lunch-table.

“Playing in Mr. Henderson’s barn,” said Marjorie, promptly.

This was well enough, but Miss Larkin, who was in high good humor, seemed possessed to ask questions.

“What did you play?” she said.

She really had no curiosity on the subject, she asked merely with a desire to appear interested in their interests, but it did seem a pity she should be so insistent to-day of all days.

“Oh, we played——” began Marjorie, and then she stopped. She had no inclination to be other than truthful, but the truth she did not want to tell.

“Well, we played——” supplemented King, with a desire to help Marjorie out of her quandary, but he, too, came to a standstill.

“Well, well!” said Miss Larkin, shaking a playful finger at the red-faced trio, “you must have been up to something naughty, if you can’t tell me about it. Oh, fie, fie, little Maynards!”

When Miss Larkin took this tone, she was particularly aggravating, and it was Kitty who threw herself into the breach, and saved the day by her ready wit.

“Larky, dear,” she began, and Miss Larkin smiled gaily at the nickname, “we truly weren’t up to any mischief, but we beg you as a special favor not to ask us what we were doing—because—well, because it’s a sort of a secret.”

“A secret, bless your hearts! Then, of course, I don’t want to know. All children love secrets. Keep yours, my dearies; I didn’t mean to be curious, I assure you.”

Now here was a nice spirit, indeed! Such a Larky was well worth making a celebration for, and the children’s spirits rose accordingly.

After luncheon, Ellen had to be interviewed.

With great secrecy, and much careful closing of doors, Marjorie and Kitty held a whispered consultation with the good-natured cook.

Ellen consented to all their requests. She agreed to make a birthday cake of real flour and eggs, besides the “float” cake, and she seemed more than willing to prepare a feast that would be acceptable to a hungry Jinks Club, as well as to the heroine of the occasion.

All was to be kept secret from Miss Larkin, so that the celebration might be a complete surprise.

“Ice cream, of course,” whispered Kitty.

“Sure, Miss Kitty,” said Ellen. “Wud ye like it pink an’ white, now; or wid a bit o’ choc’lit?”

“Just pink and white,” said Kitty, after a moment’s consideration; “and then choc’late on the cakes, Ellen. Little cakes, you know; all different colors.”

“Lave all to me, Miss Kitty; sure I’ll fix the table so grand as ye niver saw it afore. It’s likin’ Miss Larkin, I do be; though I’ll not deny she’s a bit quare at times. But she’s a kind lady, an’ I’m glad she’s goin’ to have a party.”

“Now, we must think up our presents,” said Midget, as the two girls went up to their own room. “What shall we give Miss Larkin?”

“Well, I’ll make her a pincushion, as I said. I can make a lovely one out of pink with lace over it, and little bows.”

“Yes, you’re good at those things, Kit. I can’t sew very well; I guess I’ll get her a bottle of violet water. Mother always thinks that’s a nice present. And then we must see about presents for each other, you know. I’m to give to Delight, so that’s easy. She likes everything. I guess I’ll take one of those lovely views Mother sent last, and frame it in passe-partout; she can hang it on her bedroom wall.”

“That’ll be lovely,” said Kitty. “You make those frames so neatly, Mops. But I have to think of something for Flip; that’s awful hard.”

“Oh, no, ’tisn’t; make some of that cocoanut fudge—the new recipe; and then fill a pretty box, and tie it up with a ribbon. He’ll love it.”

“That is a good idea; I believe I’ll do that. I won’t make it until Wednesday morning; I can do it before school, and then it’ll be fresh.”

“Yes,” agreed Midget, “and while you’re about it, Kit, make enough, so we can have some, too.”