“But that’s got to be cleared off,” objected Eugenia. “That’s Miss Bob Parker’s place. We all wanted it, but she got it tagged first. Belden House Annie promised her a step-ladder to climb up by, but she said a chair would do.”
Georgia sighed and dumped the ornaments of the dresser top, cover and all, into her upper drawer. “A gargoyle party is a thing that grows on your hands,” she said sadly. “Let’s go and eat. If there’s anything else to clear off, we’ll do it later.”
When the gargoyle party opened it was certain that, whether or not it had grown on Georgia’s hands, it was every bit her room could hold. Betty and Babbie, who had been too busy enjoying Harding to bother about costumes, were the only guests who were not wearing some sort of fantastic disguise. Bob had bought a box of paints and made her own mask, modeling it and her drapery of brown denim after the imp that the “B. A.’s Abroad” had given her. Eugenia Ford was a gryphon,—or at least Mary Brooks said so,—with the most beautiful pair of wings that had ever appeared at a Harding party. Polly Eastman was the elephant that sits on the tower of Notre Dame. Georgia had planned to be the other half of the elephant, in accordance with Harding usage in the matter of elephants and other four-footed creatures. But at the last minute she discovered that the Notre Dame elephant wasn’t four-footed.
“Gargoyles never are,” said Lucile wisely—it was she who had pointed out the mistake. “But never mind, Georgia. You can be one of my two heads. I was going to be a two-headed beast if I could. Only Vesta White changed her mind afterward and wanted to be an eagle.”
There were other gargoyles, as impossible to classify as the real ones, and they squatted in rows on Georgia’s bed and her big window-box, popped up mysteriously from behind her desk, or lounged in strange attitudes in her easy chairs. Bob Parker actually did get up on the chiffonier, off the edge of which she hung in such realistic gargoyle style that the judges, Babbie and Betty, unhesitatingly awarded her the prize.
“Not a bit fair,” objected young Eugenia, flapping her beautiful gryphon’s wings disconsolately. “We should all have looked a lot grander on chiffoniers.”
“But you weren’t all clever enough to grab the one there was,” put in Georgia pacifically.
“Having a gargoyle of your own makes you notice the attitudes more,” declared Bob proudly. “Never mind, Miss Ford. The prize is candy, and we’ll pass it around while we wait for Georgia’s refreshments to materialize.”
“You haven’t forgotten your Harding manners, Bob,” said Betty severely.
“No, you don’t any of you act a bit like alums,” declared a tall junior, taking off her mask to breathe.