“That was the only way she’d let us go,” Peggy told them all in self-defense, and then in the delight of definite plans their joy in the prospect returned.
[CHAPTER VI—THE BEAN AUCTION]
You wouldn’t have recognized Gloomy House if you had seen it before the Andrews girls’ ministrations and then walked into it in company with those gay young people on Thanksgiving noon. All spick and span and as gloomless as a house should be on that wonderful day, it was made cheery by leaping flames in the big fireplaces, and by gorgeous, flaunting chrysanthemums in tall vases. Mr. Huntington was all dressed up for the occasion and came forward to greet the guests, now in their best clothes, just as if he had not said good-by to most of them an hour earlier when they ran out the back door toward their school, clad in checked aprons and equipped with scrubbing brushes and brooms and mops.
Mrs. Forest, of course, had not been one of the broom brigade, nor of the more aristocratically occupationed cooking contingent, either. She swept magnificently into the room and gave Mr. Huntington a high handshake that was meant to impress him very much, but didn’t.
“I think the dinner is nearly ready,” called a gay little voice from the kitchen, and Peggy’s head was thrust through the doorway, all bright with its crooked dimples much in evidence. Her fair hair was curling moistly around her forehead and her face was all pink and hot from being so near the stove for so long a time.
“It’s been a terrible ordeal if you want to know it,” complained Florence Thomas, her assistant, laughing as they brought the dinner to the table. “I feel all sizzled up and roasted, and both my hands are cut and burned beyond recognition. But if anyone ever saw such a wonderful dinner before, I envy them the experience, that’s all.”
The long-unused table at Huntington House was one of the most gorgeous sights that the hungry eyes of school-girls ever beheld. Mr. Huntington himself looked as if he could hardly believe he was awake when he saw its lavish magnificence.
The girls in their enthusiasm had given the dinner many touches that more experienced housewives would never have happened to think of. The color scheme was golden orange and brown. The center-piece was a triumphant pumpkin hollowed out and scalloped and laden with oranges, grapes, and very red apples. The turkey smoked in the middle of the table with the vegetable dishes clustered around it. And in most beautiful script, worked out in nuts and stem raisins arranged on the tablecloth, was the word “Thanksgiving.”
At each place was the “grind” with the person’s name on it, and such shrieks of laughter as filled the room while the girls, the principal and the old man trouped around the table reading the funny legends, examining the ridiculous souvenirs appended, all in a hurried and eager endeavor to find their own places! Not nearly all of the girls could sit at the table—there were sixty in the school,—but the grinds were arranged near together and then each girl took her plate with a plentiful helping of everything and sat down in one of the chairs by the fireplace or against the wall of the great dining-room.
Mr. Huntington was not “ground” so very badly, after all. He found at his place a quaint little box painted to represent a house, with tiny doors and windows marked on it. It bore the legend “Gloomy House,” and falling from the door were weird little pasteboard roly-poly objects labeled “Glooms.” These were flat but stood erect by virtue of wee standards at the back pasted to the paper yard of the house. They were in all attitudes of scurrying away with ridiculous faces expressing grief. A slip of paper invited: “Lift the roof of Gloomy House and see why the Glooms flee.”