“Don't I hear the frou-frou of silken skirts?” inquired Missy one afternoon when she was in Tess's room, watching her friend comb the golden tresses which hung in rich profusion about her shoulders.
“It's the mater,” answered Tess. “She's dressed to pay some visits to the gentry. Later she's to dine at the vicarage. She's ordered out the trap, I believe.”
“Oh, not the governess-cart?”
Yes, Tess said it WAS the governess-cart; and her answer was as solemn as Missy's question.
It was that same “dinner” at the “vicarage”—in Cherryvale one dines at mid-day, and the Presbyterian minister blindly believed he had invited the O'Neills for supper—that gave Tess one of her most brilliant inspirations. It came to her quite suddenly, as all true inspirations do. The Marble Hearts would give a dinner-party!
The Marble Hearts were Missy's “crowd,” thus named after Tess had joined it. Of course, said Tess, they must have a name. A fascinating fount of ideas was Tess's. She declared, now, that they MUST give a dinner-party, a regular six o'clock function. Life for the younger set in Cherryvale was so bourgeois, so ennuye. It devolved upon herself and Missy to elevate it. So, at the next meeting of the crowd, they would broach the idea. Then they'd make all the plans; decide on the date and decorations and menu, and who would furnish what, and where the fete should be held. Perhaps Missy's house might be a good place. Yes. Missy's dining room was large, with the porch just outside the windows—a fine place for the orchestra.
Missy listened eagerly to all the earlier features of the scheme—she knew Tess could carry any point with the crowd; but about the last suggestion she felt misgivings. Mother had very strange, old-fashioned notions about some things. She MIGHT be induced to let Missy help give an evening dinner-party, though she held that fifteen-year-old girls should have only afternoon parties; but to be persuaded to lend her own house for the affair—that would be an achievement even for Tess!
However miracles continue to happen in this cut-and-dried world. When the subject was broached to Missy's mother with carefully considered tact, she bore up with puzzling but heavenly equanimity. She looked thoughtfully at the two girls in turn, and then gazed out the window.
“A six o'clock dinner-party, you say?” she repeated, her eyes apparently fixed on the nasturtium bed.
“Yes, Mrs. Merriam.” It was Tess who answered. Missy's heart, an anxious lump in her throat, hindered speech.