"It's fun, isn't it?" said Eugenia, one day when they were waiting for their lunch to be brought up. "I am always wondering what is coming next, for Cousin Elizabeth has never missed a day, sending up some surprise with our meals. It is a continual surprise-party."
"We'll be dreadfully spoiled," said Joyce, "like a little boy at home that I know. He insists on keeping Christmas the year around. As he is the only child, and they'd give him the moon if they could reach it, they let him hang up his stocking every night, and every morning there is a present in it for him."
"Cousin Elizabeth is spoiling us just the same way," said Eugenia. "Those little souvenir spoons she sent up with the chocolate yesterday are perfect darlings. I think the world of mine."
"I wonder what the surprise will be to-day," said Lloyd, as the jingling of silver and tinkling of ice in glasses sounded on the stairs.
"I know," said Betty, running to open the door for the procession of tray bearers. "It is conundrum salad. I helped godmother make it."
Eliot, Mom Beck, and the housemaid entered in solemn file, each bearing a tray containing a simple lunch, in the centre of which was a fancy plate containing a pile of crisp green lettuce.
"Isn't that a dainty dish to set before the king!" exclaimed Joyce, examining her conundrum salad. "Oh, girls, how that did fool me. I could have sworn that those were real lettuce leaves, and they are only paper. But what a clever imitation, and what a lot of conundrums written inside!"
"See if you can guess this one?" cried Eugenia. "Isn't it funny?" and she read a clever one that set them all to thinking. There was much laughter when they finally had to give it up, and she told them the answer.
"Now listen to this," said Lloyd next, and then it was Joyce's turn, and the lunch was eaten in the midst of much laughing and many bright remarks that the salad called forth.
"You wouldn't think that having measles was so funny," said Betty, when the trays had been carried out, "if you had had it the way I did. It was in the middle of harvest, so nobody had time to take care of me. Cousin Hetty had so much to do that she couldn't come up-stairs many times a day to wait on me. She'd just look in the door and ask if I wanted anything, and hurry away again. My little room in the west gable was so hot. The sun beat against it all afternoon, and the water in the pitcher wouldn't stay cool. Sometimes I'd cry till my throat ached, wishing that I had a mother to sit beside me, and put her cool hands against my face, and rub my back when it ached, and sing me to sleep. And after I got better, and my appetite began to come back, I'd lie and watch the door for hours, it seemed to me, waiting for Cousin Hetty to come up with my meals. I'd think of all sorts of dainty things that I had read about, until my mouth watered. Then when she came, maybe there would be nothing but a cup of tea slopped all over the saucer, and a piece of burnt toast. Or maybe it would be a bowl of soup half cold, or too salty. Poor Cousin Hetty was so busy she couldn't bother to fix things for me. I couldn't help crying when she'd gone down-stairs. I'd be so disappointed.