CHAPTER VI

SUCH A LUNCHEON!

THE lemonade finished, and the glasses washed and put away, the girls were about to start for home, when along came Trudy and Norah, the Fayres’ cook, each with a tray covered with a big, white napkin.

“Oh, goody, _goody_, GOODY!” shouted Dotty, catching sight of them first. “It’s lunch to eat over here! It is! It _is_!”

They flung open the front door and as they did so, there appeared from the house on the other side, Aunt Clara and Maria, the Roses’ old coloured cook, one carrying a basket, and the other a strange-looking burden, muffled up in a piece of blanket.

“Glory be! but dis yer am hot!” and Maria hurried in with the blanketed bundle, which proved to be a silver pot of cocoa, steaming and fragrant.

Laughing with glee, the girls relieved the messengers of their loads and put them all on the dining-room table. The callers declined to stay, having a feeling that half the fun of Treasure House was in the Two D’s having it to themselves. So away they went, and with shrieks of delight, the donations were opened.

“Did you _ever_ see such a picture!” cried Dolly, as she brought to view a small platter of cold tongue, garnished round with asparagus tips and tiny pickles.

“And gaze on this to go with it!” Dotty said, flourishing a plate of sandwiches, delicate and dainty, and of several varieties.

“Let’s eat ’em now, while the cocoa’s hot, and anyway, I can’t wait.”

Dotty seated herself at the table, while Dolly, in her methodical way, went on with the preparations. “I’ll put the dessert on this side table,” she said. “Don’t begin, Dot, till it’s all ready. _Will_ you look! Here’s a Floating Island! Just enough for us two, in Trudy’s best glass dish! And Maria’s little raisin cakes! Say, Dot, they telephoned or something and arranged this lunch between the two houses.”

“’Course they did. _Do_ come on, Dolly. Don’t stand admiring the things all day. Come on and eat.”

“All right, everything is all ready now, and we can eat in comfort. Here’s a lovely basket of fruit, but we won’t want that for lunch, let’s keep it for this afternoon.”

“Keep it for Christmas! if you’ll only come on! Dolly Fayre, you are so slow, you do exasperate me somethin’ awful!”

“Dotty Rose, you are so impatient, you drive me crazy!” but Dolly came, smiling and tranquil, and took her seat at the table.

“Isn’t it great!” she said, looking about at the pretty golden room, the tempting feast, daintily set forth, and at eager Dotty, her dark eyes sparkling, and her red lips pouting at Dolly’s delay.

“Simpully gorgeous!” and Dotty’s pout disappeared as they began the first meal in Treasure House. “I say, Dollum, isn’t it funny how we Roses came here and happened to live alongside of you Fayres, and you and I became such chums?”

“Awful funny. And we’re such good friends, even though we’re so different in every way.”

“Not in every way, we like the same things often, but sometimes we’re so very different, it makes us seem differenter than we really are.”

“Yes, I guess that’s it, though I can’t exactly follow your meaning. My, but these sandwiches are good! Let’s have lunch here every Saturday, shall us? Of course, we’ll fix the things ourselves. We couldn’t expect Trudy and your Aunt Clara to do it,—only this first time. But Norah and Maria will make things for us, and we can do a lot ourselves. I mean to learn to cook,—not so much cook on the stove, you know,—as to make sandwiches and salads and desserts and deviled eggs and—”

“And cocoa—and oh, Dollyrinda, some Saturday we’ll ask somebody to lunch, and we’ll make all the things ourselves!”

“And, oh, Dotsie, when the boys come home for Thanksgiving, maybe we won’t have fun! Brother Bert is crazy to see this house.”

“And Bob is, too. I expect those two brothers of ours will just take possession of it.”

“’Deed they won’t! But of course they can come here all they want, and if they want to borrow it for a boy racket of their own, why of course we’ll let ’em.”

“Well, isn’t that pretty much taking possession, I’d like to know! Have some more cocoa?”

“You mustn’t say, ‘Have some _more_’ anything. You ought to say, ‘Have some cocoa?’”

“But you’ve already had some!”

“I know it. But that’s good manners. You must ignore the fact of my having had any.”

“Pooh! Well, Miss Fayre, as you haven’t had any cocoa, to my knowledge, mayn’t I beg you to try it?”

“Since you put it so politely, I don’t care if I do take another cup or two. You see, _I_ don’t have to ignore it, I own right up.”

“You and your manners are too much for me!”

“But, honestly, Dotty, it is right not to put in the ‘more.’ And you mustn’t do it.”

“All right, I won’t. But it’s simply impossible for me to ignore the dozens of sandwiches you’ve eaten. So I’ll say, Have some cake?”

“As the sandwiches are all gone, I believe I will begin on the cake. But, somehow, I don’t feel as hungry as I did. Do you?”

“Nixy. Say, Doll, here’s an idea! S’pose we save these cakes,—there’s a lot of them,—and that big basket of fruit till this afternoon and invite the two Rawlins girls over. How about it?”

“All right, I’ll go you. For, honest, I can’t eat any of it now. But we’ll eat up Trudy’s Floating Island, she makes it lovely, and there isn’t such a lot of that.”

“All right. If we’re going to ask those girls, we must get a move on and do up these dishes. I hate to do dishes, don’t you?”

“Yes, at home. But it isn’t so bad here. It’s kind of fun!”

“Not very much fun. But anyway, the dishes that belong over to our homes, we can pile in this basket, and Maria will come for them.”

“They’ve got to be washed first, though. It isn’t nice to send them back unwashed.”

“Oh, what a prim old maid! You ought to live alone with a cat and a poll parrot!”

“That isn’t old-maidness, that’s just plain, every-day tidiness. Now you get a dish towel, and I’ll wash, and we’ll have these things put to rights in a jiffy.”

The girls knew how, and they did their work well, but it did take some time, for such work cannot be done too swiftly. But on the whole, they enjoyed the task, and were gratified at the sight of the shining glass and china in their own glass-cupboard, and the neatly packed basket and tray full of dishes to be returned to their home pantries.

Then they went and sat before their Study fire, to rest and talk.

“Seems to me,” said Dolly, “time does go awful fast. Here it’s after three o’clock, and the afternoon is ’most gone.”

“And we must go home and dress,” said Dotty, “if we’re going to have Grace and Ethel. These ginghams won’t do.”

“No, not in our pretty new house! Well, let’s go home and dress, and then we can telephone them, from home. Shall I do it, or you?”

“Oh, I’ll do it. You’ll have all you can do to get dressed in time to get back here before dark. You’re so everlasting slow.”

“Slow and sure, as the molasses said to the quicksilver. All right, you telephone the Rawlinses, and if they can’t come, what then? Shall we ask any one else?”

“Might ask Maisie May. But we don’t want a lot. It’ll seem too much like a party, and besides, there won’t be enough cakes to go round.”

“All right. If the Rawlinses can’t come you call up Maisie, and if she can’t, we’ll flock by ourselves. Maybe Mother’ll want me to go out with her somewhere, anyway. You never can tell.”

“Oh, don’t do that! If you do, I’ll get the girls to come just to see me. And it would be horrid not to be together this first day.”

“Well, I ’spect I can come back. Say, Dot, we ought to have a telephone connection here.”

“Wish we could, but, you know when we spoke of it, Dad said we couldn’t have everything all at once. Let’s strike for it for Christmas.”

“All right. But I s’pose we can just as well run over home to telephone. Now, you take your folkses’ basket and I’ll take our trays. Got your key?”

“Yes. Have you? I’ll lock the door. You go on. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” and both girls ran away home.

Mrs. Fayre had intended to have Dolly go on an errand with her, but, hearing of the projected plan, she let the child off.

“Go over to Treasure House, dear, if you like,” she said; “but some days I must claim you as my own little girl. I don’t want to lose you entirely.”

“No, Mumsie,” said Dolly, her arms around her mother’s neck, “but Saturdays, you know,—can’t I always have Saturdays for the House?”

“I shouldn’t wonder. Now go and dress. And be home by dinner time, Trudy expects company.”

“Yes’m,” and Dolly scampered away to dress. She heard the telephone and went to answer, thinking it might be Dotty. And it was.

“The Rawlins girls are coming,” Dotty said, “and Maisie happened to be at their house so I had to ask her too. There’ll be cakes enough if we go light ourselves.”

“All right. I’ll be over pretty soon. Good-bye.”

Dolly made a leisurely toilette, as she always did. She rarely moved quickly, but on the other hand, she was not often late. She put on a pretty little voile frock, of bluet blue, with white pipings. A big white ribbon bow tied her hair back, and then it fell in a long braid, with curly ends. She threw a big cloak round her, one of Trudy’s discarded party-cloaks, and ran across to Treasure House.

Of course, Dotty was already there. She had on a dress of bright Scotch plaid, which suited her type. Scarlet ribbons on her hair, and a necklace of bright red beads made her look quite festive.

“What a jolly cloak! Trude’s?”

“It was, but she gave it to me. Just the thing to wear to run over here. It’s warm, but it’s handy.”

“It’s dandy, you mean. Wish I had one. I guess I can bamboozle Mother or Auntie into making me one. You look awfully nice this afternoon. Why didn’t you wear your blue beads?”

“They don’t quite match this frock. They’re too greenishly blue. Why did you wear those red ones?”

“’Cause they _do_ match this dress.”

“No, they don’t. They’re crimson and the red in the plaid is scarlet.”

“Oh, what a fuss! Well, then, I wore ’em ’cause they’re pretty and becoming and I like ’em,—so there now!”

“All right, glad you do. Here come the girls.”

Further discussion of tints and shades was cut short by the entrance of Grace and Ethel Rawlins and Maisie May.

“Well, if this isn’t the greatest place! I never heard of such a thing before. Where did you get the idea?”

“Oh, it’s just heavenly! Such lovely furniture and things!”

“And there’s another room! Why, a dining-room! I _never_ did!”

Exclamations drowned each other. The visitors went in each of the three rooms and each called forth new praises. It was indeed a novelty, and appealed to the girls’ hearts as a most desirable and cosy place to read or study.

“But _can_ you study here?” asked Maisie. “I should think you’d be all the time thinking what to do next to fix it up, and you couldn’t put your mind on your lessons.”

“It may be that way,” laughed Dolly. “We haven’t really tried it yet. You see we only moved in this morning. Not everything is to rights yet. We don’t mind you girls seeing it before it’s all done, but I want it in apple-pie order before we have the Hallowe’en party.”

“Come on,” said Dotty, “let’s gather round the Study fire, and talk over the party. Hallowe’en isn’t so very far away.”

The girls drew up chairs for some and cushions from the window-seats for some, and grouped themselves comfortably before the fire. Dolly put on a log from time to time, for she was one of those rare creatures who are born with a sense of fire-building, as others are born with a sense of colour or rhythm. She always knew just where to poke the dying logs, and where to lay the fresh ones. Dotty had promised not to touch it, for she had a fatal propensity for putting the fire out, or at least causing it to die down.

“Oh, it’s ideal!” exclaimed Grace; “I do envy you girls this place. I wish we could have one, but Father wouldn’t hear of it. He’d think it cost too much.”

“It didn’t cost such an awful lot, my father says,” said Dolly. “But, you know it isn’t always cost that counts. Lots of things are unusual, and that makes people think they are impossible. Your father could afford one, Grace, if he wanted to. You see, it could be built much cheaper than this one. You needn’t really have but one room and then—my goodness! What’s that?”

For a regular hullabaloo was heard outside. Knocking at the door, tapping at the windows, even pounding on the house itself!

Dotty looked out.

“It’s the boys!” she said, and her voice was as of one who announces a dire calamity.

“Oh, fiddlesticks!” exclaimed Dolly. “What shall we do? I didn’t want them this afternoon.”

“Tell ’em they can’t come in,” said Maisie. “It isn’t fair.”

“Yes,” agreed Grace. “Just open the door, and tell them they must wait till next week. I’ll tell them, if you want me to. My brother Clayton is there, and I’ll make him take the others away.”

“I’ll go to the door,” said Dotty. “I can make them go away. If Doll goes, she’ll be so good-natured she’ll let them in. And we haven’t enough—well, that is,—we don’t want them to-day.”

The noise continued, and the boys were now peeping in at the windows, and making signs of impatience.

Dotty and Grace opened the door, intending to persuade the would-be visitors to depart in peace, but the boys entered in a sort of flying wedge. It would have taken far more than two girls to keep them out. They were by no means rude or boisterous, but they were so determined to come in,—that they just came.

“Whew!” shouted Lollie Henry, “if this isn’t a peach of a place! How do you do, Dolly and Dotty! I suppose you’re hostesses. Yes, we _will_ come in, thank you! De-lighted.”

And all the other boys,—and there were half a dozen of them,—joined the acclamation.

“Looky here at the dining-room! Well, maybe we aren’t swell! Wowly-wow-wow! See the dinky little kitchen-place! What do you cook, girls? Oh, no, thank you, we _can’t_ stay to supper. Oh, no, we _really_ can’t. _So_ sorry! Still, of course, if you _insist_—”

The Two D’s gave in. The boys were so honestly interested and admiring, and they wanted to see everything so much that the hostesses couldn’t bear to turn them out, and indeed, they couldn’t turn them out if they had tried. So they let them stay, ungrudgingly, and after viewing the whole domain, the entire company surrounded the Study fire once more. The boys mostly sat on the floor, but that made it all the merrier.

“I’ll tell you the honest truth,” said Dolly, a little later. “We’ve got enough cakes and fruit for one piece all round, if that will satisfy you, all right.”

“Ample!” declared Tod Brown. “I _never_ eat more than one piece of fruit. A small quarter of an apple, or a section of an orange is a great sufficiency for my delicate appetite.”

The others rejoined with similar nonsense, and the scant refreshments were brought out and divided fairly, amid much laughter, and generous attempts at self denial.

And so the opening day at Treasure House passed off in great glee and merriment, and every guest was well pleased with the entertainment.