“Yes—No—No,” Mimi was answering. “Oh it was too perfectly precious—all of it—and Daddy, Mother Dear—I am an honor camper! See!” She fished in her purse and held up the felt emblem.
“And you are something else, too. Today you are——”
But stop—Mother scowled at Daddy over Mimi’s head and would have put her hand over his mouth if she could have reached it; wondering frantically if it were harder for big boys or small boys to keep a secret, she changed the subject swiftly.
“Is Miss Jane very tired from having the responsibility of you wild young things?”
“Not at all—she’s grand—wonderful. Next to you Mother, I love her best of nearly any one—and oh, Mother! She is——”
Then Mimi nearly told a secret. She stopped herself in time. Perhaps she would have gone on but Daddy was turning in the driveway. At the first sound of the car, Von, abandoning his watch on the porch and forgetting the restrained manners of German police pedigree, came bounding toward them. Mammy Cissy was standing in the door grinning.
The striped runners of wandering jew falling over the edges of the hanging baskets brushed her hair as she ducked under and her swinging arm almost knocked a fern pot from its pedestal, for Mimi had jumped on to the porch neither from the porte-cochere nor the front steps. With Von barking boldly at her heels, she had cut across the lawn and leaped on to the porch to Mammy—Precious old Cissy, who this instant hugged her close, and the next was holding her at arm’s length saying:—
“Lan’s sakes alive, Miss Mimi, yo sho is brought home a good crop of freckles and this newfangled sun tan both!”
Then Daddy calling from the drive, “Here, camper, help take your things in. What good is this old land lubber with a bulging sea bag?”
Daddy made such fun of things. He was unusually entertaining today (Mother had told him to be). While he and Mimi carried the things upstairs to her room—her own room with its ivory furniture and crisp swiss curtains tied back with green taffeta bows—Mammy, Mother and yes, Junior too, had disappeared. Daddy knew they were in the kitchen, busy putting last touches here and there and lighting candles—lighting candles in the middle of the day!