There was never much money to spend in entertainments in the little brown house, but birthdays never passed unheeded. Love can always find some way to keep the red-letter days of its calendar. Joyce and her mother had planned a novel supper for Holland and his friends, thinking it would make a merry feast for them to laugh over now, and a pleasant memory by and by, when three score years had been added to his ten. Looking back on the day when somebody cared that it was his birthday, and celebrated it with loving forethought, would kindle a glow in his heart, no matter how old and white-haired he might live to be.
The little mother could not take much time from her sewing, but she suggested and helped with the verses, and came out when the table was nearly ready, to add a few finishing touches.
A Feast of Sails, Joyce called it, saying that, if Cinderella's godmother could change a pumpkin into a gilded coach, there was no reason why they should not transform an ordinary luncheon into a fleet of boats, for a boy whose greatest ambition was to be a naval officer, and who was always talking about the sea.
These were the invitations, printed in Jack's best style, and decorated by Joyce with a little water-colour sketch of a ship in full sail:
Please come, hale and hearty,
To Holland Ware's party,
September, the twenty-first day,
And partake in a bunch
Of a queer birthday lunch,
And afterward join in a play.
The things which we'll eat
Will be boats, sour and sweet,
With maybe an entrée of whales.
Will you please to arrive
Awhile before five,
The hour that this boat-luncheon sails.
The invitations aroused great interest among all Holland's friends, and every boy was at the gate long before the appointed hour, curious to see the "boats sour and sweet" that could be eaten. But even Holland did not know what was in store for them. Joyce had driven him out of the kitchen while she was preparing the surprise, and would not begin to set the table until Jack had marshalled every boy into the dark parlour and begun his magic lantern show. The baby was with them, a baby no longer, he stoutly declared, as he had that day been promoted from kilts to his first pair of trousers, and he insisted on being called henceforth by his own name, Norman.
As he and Jack were to be added to the party of ten, the table was set for twelve. It was a gay sight when everything was ready. From the mirror lake in the middle, on which a dozen toy swans were afloat, arose a lighthouse made of doughnuts. It was surmounted by a little lantern from which floated a tiny flag. At one end of the table a huge watermelon cut lengthwise, and furnished with masts and sails of red crêpe paper, looked like a brig just launched. At the other end rose the great white island of the birthday cake, with its ten red candles. All down the sides of the table was a flutter of yellow and green and white and blue sails, for at each plate was a little fleet sporting the colours of the rainbow.
It had been an interesting task to make the dressed eggs into canoes, to cut the cheese into square rafts, and hollow out the long cucumber pickles into skiffs, fitting sails or pennons to each broomstraw mast. It had been still more interesting to change a bag of big fat raisins into turtles, by poking five cloves and a bit of stem into each one for the head, legs, and tail.
Joyce took an artistic pleasure in arranging the orange boats around the table. She had made them by cutting an orange in two, and putting a stick of peppermint candy in each half for a mast, and they had a foreign, Chinese look with their queer sails, flaming with little red-ink dragons. Jack had drawn them. Here and there, over the sea of white tablecloth, she had scattered candy fish and the raisin turtles. At the last moment there were potato chips to be heated, and islands of sandwiches and jelly to distribute, and the can of sardines to open. Mary had insisted on having the sardines to personate whales, and she herself served one to each guest on a little shell-shaped plate belonging to her set of doll dishes. It had taken so long to prepare all these boats, that Joyce had had no time to decorate the menu cards as she had planned, but Jack had cut them in the shape of an anchor, and stuck a fish-hook through each one for a souvenir. This was what was printed on them: