14. Kit to the Rescue
In the following days, the girls and Tommy turned their attention to plans for the barbecue. The first thing to be sure of was a full moon. This came along the last week in June, so they made their arrangements accordingly.
Buzzy and Sally took almost as much interest in the affair as the girls themselves. All that day, when it finally did arrive, they worked gathering wood for the fire, knocking together temporary picnic tables, and digging the barbecue pit at the back of the house. Doris was making the lemonade and said she had cut and squeezed lemons until her whole mouth was puckered up, and her fingernails felt pickled. Kit was everywhere at once, it seemed. She showed Buzzy how to make the spit for the meat to be cooked on. She beguiled Matt, who had come down from Maple Grove to help around a bit, into moving the phonograph out on the front porch.
It did seem as if all Elmhurst and surrounding territory had turned out to show its neighborly spirit. There were cars parked along the road, in the barnyard, the driveway, and everywhere.
“I shouldn’t wonder, Margie, if we had as many as a hundred folks here tonight,” remarked Becky.
“More likely two hundred, Rebecca. It looks like a big crowd all right.” They were up on the porch where Mrs. Craig hovered between the lounge chair where Mr. Craig sat, and her various guests, welcoming each in her own charming way.
Doris and Kit followed Jean’s lead. First Jean rounded up the girls whom she had met on the ride with Sally and introduced them to the other Craig sisters. Tommy could not be located from one minute to another. He raced all over the grounds. One minute he was back by the barbecue pit trying to supervise things but generally heckling Buzzy. The next minute he was back in the front of the house dodging in and out of the crowd. But Doris and Kit led the other girls over to where the lemonade, ice cream and cake was laid out and asked them to serve. It was much better than standing around, shy and silent, not knowing what to do next. Kit found one girl, Abby Tucker, leaning disconsolately against a pear tree at the side of the drive. Her white dress was too short for her, and her hair was straggling in limp strands down her back. She looked lonely and rather indignant too.
“Don’t you want to come over and help us with the ice cream?” asked Kit.
“No, I don’t,” said Abby flatly. “They always ask me to help pass things to eat at the church suppers. I want to have a good time myself tonight. Though we aren’t going to have a good time.”
Kit looked at her doubtfully. She thoroughly realized the state of mind that will not let itself be happy, that in fact, finds its happiness in being unhappy, but Abby’s moroseness baffled her.
“Don’t you like it here?” she asked.
Abby nodded.
“Don’t you know anyone?”
“Know most of them.”
“Then what is it?” Kit laid her arm timidly around the stooped shoulders and at the touch of real human sympathy, Abby’s reserve melted.
“My new shoes pinch awful,” she exploded.
Kit took her straight up to the house to her own room, and ransacked closets and shoe boxes until she found a pair of loafers to fit Abby, and the latter came down again smiling and radiant, ready to serve ice cream, or make herself agreeable in any way she could.
Sally came up to the porch, personally conducting her mother to Mrs. Craig. She was a tall, fair-haired woman with deep dimples like the children’s and a happy face. Seated in a chair on the porch with the roses and honeysuckle shedding a perfume around, she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Seems so nice to sit up here again, Mrs. Craig,” she said. “Sally’s told me all about how you’ve fixed the place up till it seemed as if I couldn’t wait to see it. I used to drive over once in a while after Father died, and get some slips of flowering quince and rose bushes to set out. You know I love every blade of grass in the garden and every pine cone on those trees.”
“It’s too bad you and the children couldn’t have had it.”
“Well, I don’t know. I never fret much over what has to be. Maybe this boy Ralph is all right. He’s my nephew, but I’ve never seen him. His father was a claim settler out in Oregon first off, when Cousin France married him. We called her that. Her name was Francelia. Good stock, I guess. I wish Buzzy could know him, he’s so set on being a rancher. I suppose settling and ranching’s about the same thing?”
“Not quite,” Mrs. Craig told her. Then came a chat about her own father’s ranch in California, and when Sally came back after her mother, she found her animated and interested over Buzzy’s future.
Kit and Etoile were arranging a jam session for alternate Saturday afternoons, the ones between to be given up to tennis and basketball. Those who couldn’t dance would be taught by the others. Ingeborg and Astrid and Hedda Hagerstrom stood listening and agreeing with shining eyes and eager faces. Hedda was short and strong-looking, with the bluest eyes possible and heavy blonde braids. She stared at Kit with wide-eyed wonder, Kit radiant and joyous in a yellow chambray sun-back dress, with a sprig of rambler roses in her hair.
“You’ll come, won’t you, Hedda?” she asked. “And bring any other girls over your way.”
“There’s only Abby over my way. We live on the same road.”
“Then bring Abby, but tell her to wear old shoes. We ought to find enough girls to make up a good team out here.”
“Do you like hikes?” asked Lucy Peckham. “I think it would be fun to have a hiking club, and each week tramp away off somewhere. There’s ever so many places I want to see.”
“It’s a good idea, Lucy,” Sally exclaimed.
The crowd began to break up and the Craigs stood on the porch saying goodbye to everyone. It was after twelve before the last car had driven away. Tommy was found sound asleep in the living room on the couch. Jean and Doris hunted in the grass for lost spoons and ice cream saucers.
“It was a good party,” Jean said happily. “We got acquainted with all our neighbors, and now I feel as if I could go ahead and organize something.”