Tabithas Vacation | Page 9

hands, you might put the potatoes on in the frying pan; Irene, set the table; Inez, fetch the water; and Mercy, cut the bread. Is the gingerbread done, Gloriana?"
"Yes," responded the junior housekeeper proudly, "and already sliced for the table. Shall I bring in the pie?"
"The pies!" shouted the six McKittricks.
"I had forgotten all about them," confessed the older girl. "Yes, you better get them right away. One will be enough for supper,--the tins are so large."
While Tabitha was speaking, Gloriana had stepped briskly out of the door into the summer night and disappeared around the corner of the house; but immediately a terrified scream pierced the air, there was a loud snort and the sound of startled, scampering feet, and Gloriana burst into the room again bearing an empty plate in one hand and a dilapidated looking pie, minus all its frosting, in the other.
"Oh, our lovely pies!" wailed the children in chorus.
"The burros!" gasped Tabitha.
Gloriana nodded. "One had his nose right in the middle of this pie. The other beast had upset the second tin and was licking up the crumbs from the gravel."
"Oh, dear, I want some pie!" whimpered Rosslyn, puckering his face to cry.
"Ain't that the worst luck?" Susie burst out.
"If you had put the pies in the window to cool, like mamma does--" began Inez.
"It's too late to make any more to-night," Gloriana hastily interrupted, seeing a wrathful sparkle in Tabitha's black eyes; "but if you don't make any more fuss about it this time, we'll bake some to-morrow."
"And if you want any supper at all, you'd better come now," advised Mercedes, from her post by the stove, where she was vigorously making hash of the sliced potatoes. "This stuff is beginning to burn."
Gloriana rescued the frying pan, and the disappointed children gathered about the table, trying to look cheerful, but failing dismally.
"Don't want any 'tato," objected Janie, scorning the proffered dish. "Dingerbread!"
"Potato and beans first," insisted Tabitha.
"Dingerbread!" stubbornly repeated the child, so sleepy and cross that the weary older girl said no more, but slid a large slice of the savory cake into the little plate, and proceeded to help the other children in the same liberal manner. No one wanted beans and potato, but at the first mouthful of the tempting-looking gingerbread, everyone paused, looked inquiringly at her neighbor, chewed cautiously a time or two, and then eight hands went to eight pair of lips.
"I thought we stoned raisins for this cake," cried Susie, half indignantly.
"So you did," replied Gloriana, her face flushed crimson as she bent over her plate, intently examining her slice of cake.
"Oh, and put the stones in the cake! What did you do with the raisins?" demanded Inez.
Before Glory could frame a reply, or offer any excuse for the accident, Irene slid hurriedly off her chair, flew through the doorway and down the path toward town, but she was back in a moment, and in her hand she held a cup of raisins.
"Why, Irene McKittrick!" cried Mercedes, lifting her hands in horror. "What made you hide them?"
"I didn't hide them," the twin indignantly protested. "The cup was in my lap when Rosslyn called that Janie was lost, and I forgot to put it down when I ran out-doors. I remembered it by the time we reached our playhouse, so I set it down there and that's where I found it now."
"Janie wasn't lost," interrupted that small maiden in drowsy tones. "Me went to get a letter."
"To get a letter!" chorused her sisters. "Where?"
"To the store where Mercy goes. A man dave me one, too," she finished triumphantly, squirming down from her high chair to search about the room for the missing epistle, while the rest of the family forgot both pie and gingerbread in joining in the hunt. Rosslyn found it at last under the stove where it had fallen when Janie began her investigation of the oven; and the girls exclaimed in genuine surprise, "Why, it is a real letter!"'
"Addressed to mamma," said Mercedes, "Do you suppose Janie really went to the post-office all alone?"
But Janie was fast asleep in her chair where she had retired when convinced that Rosslyn had actually found her precious letter; so the sisters once more bent curious eyes upon the soiled envelope.
"Better re-address it to your mother," suggested Tabitha, remembering that in her written instructions, Mrs. McKittrick had failed to mention the matter of mail which might come to Silver Bow for her.
"Mamma told me to open all her letters, and not even to send papa's to Los Angeles, unless 'twas something very important."
"Then why don't you open it?" cried Susanne impatiently.
"And see who wrote it," added Inez.
"I--I--guess I will." Deliberately she tore open the envelope, spread out the brief letter it contained, and with a comically important air, read the few