Half a Dozen Girls

by Anna Chapin Ray

It proved to be one of the warm, heavy days which come in the early part of May, a day that is delightful to those who can be absolutely idle, but which is singularly oppressive to the unfortunate majority who have duties to which they must attend. Though the dinner hour was not until six o'clock, Polly was up betimes, and went rushing about the house and slamming doors, with a profound disregard of Aunt Jane's morning nap.

By eleven o'clock the house was in festal array, and the most delicate of lemon puddings was cooling on the ice. Nothing more could be done for hours; but Polly resisted all her mother's efforts to induce her to rest, and roamed excitedly up and down the rooms, now and again pausing to flick a few grains of dust from the mantel, or to rearrange one of the graceful bunches of flowers that decorated the house.

"Now, Polly," said Aunt Jane, at length, with an encouraging trust in human nature; "you'll be utterly tired out to-morrow, and you know that always makes you cross. I really think you'd better go and lie down, or else sit down quietly and read."

But Polly scorned the suggestion. She was longing for the hour to come when she could retire to the kitchen. At length it came and, leaving her new spring gown spread on the bed, to be hastily put on at the last minute, she went running down the stairs. In the hall she paused, horror-stricken, as she heard a familiar voice from the next room, saying to her mother,—

"I always have heard say that his brother hadn't enough principle to save even the little tail of his soul, but nobody ever thought the worse of Solomon Baxter for all that. Folks can't help their relations; it's their friends that tells the story."

Miss Deborah Bean had come to dinner.

With a sinking heart, Polly went on to the kitchen and sat down on one edge of the table, to collect her ideas. If anything did go wrong, she knew, from past experiences, that Miss Bean would not hesitate to mention the fact. But nothing should go wrong; and as Polly gave the roast of beef a vigorous push ovenward, she resolved to do or die. When she went to bed that night, she felt that she had very nearly done both, the doing and the dying.

In the first place, the fire obstinately refused to burn, and in working over that, Polly entirely forgot her vegetables until some time after they should have been put on to cook; so the dinner was delayed for a long half-hour, while Polly was haunted by spectral visions of her guests falling from their chairs, in the faintness of slow starvation. At length all was ready, and leaving the girl to take up the tomato soup which Polly regarded as her one infallible dish, she ran up-stairs to dress herself and appear before her expectant guests, with a flushed face and ruffled curls.

If she had any misgivings as she marshalled her friends to the table and pointed Miss Bean to an extra seat beside Florence, she certainly concealed them with a tact worthy of an older housekeeper. The truth was, Polly felt no uncertainty as to the beginning and the end of her feast. The soup had never failed her, the pudding she knew to be good; so she could bear with the tough and stringy roast and the hard, lumpy potatoes with a fair grace. There was a hush of interested expectancy, as Polly dipped the ladle into the creamy, foamy soup. Then, when she poured it out into the plate, the conversation hastily started up again, but not so soon as to cover a sudden giggle from Alan, which he would have given worlds to recall when he saw Polly's tragic expression, as she surveyed the thin, watery compound and the white lumps floating in it.

The mothers present accepted their shares in silence and were heroically preparing to eat them, when Miss Bean was heard to speak.