“Oh, but I won’t,” Eugenia took her up earnestly, reading Betty’s thoughts in the light of her own guilty conscience. “I promise I won’t be horrid. I was—the other day—I was—well, I’m awfully ashamed of it now, Miss Wales, and I just hated to come and ask a favor of you, after having been so disagreeable, but I couldn’t actually disobey Miss Ferris, could I? If you’ll only take me, I’ll do just as you say, and work awfully hard, and try not to be much bother.”
Betty gave a deep sigh, and then a comical little laugh. “I’m sure you will,” she said. “And I shall have to do it. Don’t you see I shall? Miss Ferris has gone away for the vacation, hasn’t she? Well, I can’t disobey her either, or disappoint her. But just imagine me tutoring anybody!” Betty sighed again resignedly.
“Miss Ferris said you’d be the best one she could possibly pick out for me,” Eugenia told her, smiling wanly through her tears. “When shall I come, so as to be the least trouble, Miss Wales?”
They arranged an hour, and then Betty asked Eugenia, as a great favor, to help her make tea for Madeline and the Cakes, because Bridget and Nora had both gone to a wedding, and their long talk had made her late with the preparations. And by the time the sandwiches were made, the lemons sliced, and the tea served, Eugenia’s face looked merely interestingly pale and care-worn, and she was planning her Sugar Cooky costume with positive enthusiasm.
Of course, Mr. Thayer’s party was a grand success. Had any party of Madeline’s planning ever been otherwise? First the little Stockings hopped merrily on to the stage that Mr. Thayer had had built at one end of the big social hall on the top floor of the factory. Hopping was their only means of locomotion, for each of them was tied securely into a mammoth stocking, its toe stuffed with paper to give it the proper shape, and its top gathered around the neck of its small occupant, whose head peered inquiringly out above. There was a Mother-Stocking, a Father-Stocking, a Good-Little-Willy-Stocking, and a Bad-Little-Billy one; there was a fireplace, and a Santa Claus, who, being a jolly fellow, relented even toward Bad-Little-Billy, and loaded the whole family with comical gifts—for in Stocking Land Santa Claus is not the mysterious, secretive apparition we know of, but a friendly visitor, who slaps you familiarly on the back and lets you come up the chimney and pat the reindeer. The frantic race of Billy and Willy Stocking to get up the chimney with their costumes intact ended the Stockings’ performance, and left the audience tearful with mirth.
Then the Cakes appeared. Sponge Cake led the procession, in a corn-colored gown trimmed elaborately with fringes of tiny sponges. She wore a festoon of sponges in her hair, and carried before her a sort of baton with the biggest sponge you could imagine stuck on the end of it. After her came Chocolate Cake, with ruffles of brown and white, and a necklace and bracelets made of chocolate candies. Next came Bride’s Cake, all in white, with a veil and orange blossoms, and Wedding Cake, with garlands of raisins, and wedding bells that tinkled when she moved. Devil’s Cake, adorned with all the little red devils that could be found on the Harding campus—relics of a fad that had prevailed in Betty’s senior year—drove a regiment of Sugar Cookies before her—yellow-haired girls, each carrying a huge cooky, whose framework was a hoop, plentifully besprinkled with a glittering sugary paste. Last of all came the Doughnuts, very big and beautifully browned, worn like life-preservers around the shoulders of their representatives. The Cakes sang and discussed their respective merits. The Sugar Cookies, being challenged to show what they could do, had a hoop-rolling, in the course of which all the sugar fell off them. Then the Twelfth Night Bakers came in, in white caps and long white aprons, and the Sugar Cookies, no longer sugared, reproached their makers, and were placated with wonderful new Twelfth Night decorations in the shape of toys, birds, and flowers.
Finally the Bakers produced a huge cake, and, served by the plebeian Doughnuts, sat down to eat it. Hidden in it were a bean, a pea, and a clove, and the three Bakers who were lucky enough to find these Twelfth Night emblems in their portions of cake had the privilege of naming the King and Queen of Revels, and the Twelfth Night Jester.
The King and Queen had really been chosen beforehand from the mill hands, and they had nothing to do but sit on gilt thrones and look imposing, while the Jester, a queer freshman who was wonderful at sleight-of-hand tricks, gave a performance in which cakes and stockings replaced the conventional rabbits and eggs.
It was all absurd and inconsequent and certainly quite different from the usual mill party, even to the way the refreshments were served, for the Cakes moved about among the audience carrying trays of ices, and the Bakers peddled their wares in the shape of little cup-cakes whose fantastic decorations rivaled those of the live Cakes in variety and grotesqueness.
“Shure an’ they ain’t fit fur civilized humans to ate at all,” Bridget had announced, as she surveyed them indignantly, “an’ it’s a shamefu’ waste of good material, not countin’ me slavin’ two days solid on ’em.”