“We’ll come and be posts for you any time after commencement,” Babe assured her amiably. “Did you know, girls, that Mary can’t stay over with Madeline because her mother is giving a New Year’s dinner-party. Who do you suppose will be there?”
The wedding festivities were over at last. “It was all perfectly scrumptious,” Babe wrote Babbie enthusiastically, “and I’m bringing you a little white satin slipper like those we had filled with puffed rice for luncheon favors, and a lovely pin that Miss Hale wants you to have just as if you had come. The nicest thing of all is that vacation isn’t over yet. Is it two weeks or two years since I saw you?”
And next came Bohemia. Before they had quite reached Washington Square Madeline tumbled her guests hastily off their car.
“I forgot to tell Mrs. McLean when to expect us,” she explained. “She is our cook. So we’ll hunt her up now and we might as well buy the luncheon as we go along.”
So first they found Mrs. McLean, a placid old Scotch woman who was not at all surprised when Madeline announced that she was giving a house-party for five and had forgotten to mention it sooner. She had a delicious Scotch burr and an irresistible way of standing in the dining-room door and saying, “Come awa’, my dears,” when she had served a meal. Like everything else connected with the Ayres establishment, she was always there when you wanted her; between times she disappeared mysteriously, leaving the kitchen quite clear for Madeline and her guests, and always turning up in time to wash the fudge-pan or the chafing-dishes.
From Mrs. McLean’s they went down a dirty, narrow street, stopping at a number of funny, foreign-looking fruit and grocery shops, where they bought whatever anybody wanted.
“Though it doesn’t matter what you have to eat,” said Roberta later, pouring cream into her coffee from an adorable little Spanish jug, “as long as you have it on this lovely old china.”
They had their coffee in the studio, sitting around the open fire, and while they were drinking it people began to drop in—Mr. Blake, who roomed just across the Square, a pretty, pale girl, who was evidently an artist because every one congratulated her on having some things “on the line” somewhere, three newspaper men from the flat above, who being on a morning daily had just gotten up and stopped in to say “Happy New Year” on their way down to Park Row, and a jolly little woman whom the others called Mrs. Bob.
“She’s promised to chaperon us,” Madeline explained to her guests. “She lives down-stairs, so we can’t go in or out without falling into her terrible clutches.”
Mrs. Bob, who was in a corner playing with the little black kitten that seemed to belong with the house, like Mrs. McLean, stopped long enough to ask if they had heard about the theatre party. They had not, so Mr. Blake explained that by a sudden change of bill at one of the theatres Mr. Sothern and Miss Marlowe were to give “The Merchant of Venice” that evening.