CHAPTER II
SHE SHALL COME?
Supper was ready. It had been ready now for ten minutes. The cool, white cloth, bright glass, glittering silver, and delicate china painted with a primrose and an ivy-leaf—the best china, and very extravagant in Gypsy, of course, but she thought the occasion deserved it—were all laid in their places upon the table. The tea was steeped to precisely the right point; the rich, mellow flavor had just escaped the clover taste on one side, and the bitterness of too much boiling on the other; the delicately sugared apples were floating in their amber juices in the round glass preserve-dish, the smoked halibut was done to the most delightful brown crispness, the puffy, golden drop-cakes were smoking from the oven, and Patty was growling as nobody but Patty could growl, for fear they would "slump down intirely an' be gittin' as heavy as lead," before they could be eaten.
There was a bright fire in the dining-room grate; the golden light was dancing a jig all over the walls, hiding behind the curtains, coquetting with the silver, and touching the primroses on the plates to a perfect sunbeam; for father and mother were coming. Tom and Gypsy and Winnie were all three running to the windows and the door every two minutes and dressed in their very "Sunday-go-to-meeting best;" for father and mother were coming. Tom had laughed well at this plan of dressing up—Gypsy's notion, of course, and ridiculous enough, said Tom; fit for babies like Winnie, and girls. (I wish I could give you in print the peculiar emphasis with which Tom was wont to dwell on this word.) But for all that, when Gypsy came down in her new Scotch plaid dress, with her cheeks so red, and her hair so smooth and black; and Winnie strutted across the room counting the buttons on his best jacket, Tom slipped away to his room, and came down with his purple necktie on.
It made a pretty, homelike picture—the bright table and the firelight, and the eager faces at the window, and the gay dresses. Any father and mother might have been glad to call it all their own, and come into it out of the cold and the dark, after a weary day's journey.
These cozy, comfortable touches about it—the little conceit of the painted china, and the best clothes—were just like Gypsy. Since she was glad to see her father and mother, it was imperatively necessary that she should show it; there was no danger but what her joy would have been sufficiently evident—where everything else was—in her eyes; but according to Gypsy's view of matters, it must express itself in some sort of celebration. Whether her mother wouldn't have been quite as well pleased if her delicate, expensive porcelain had been kept safely in the closet; whether, indeed, it was exactly right for her to take it out without leave, Gypsy never stopped to consider. When she wanted to do a thing, she could never see any reasons why it shouldn't be done, like a few other girls I have heard of in New England. However, just such a mother as Gypsy had was quite likely to pardon such a little carelessness as this, for the love in it, and the welcoming thoughts.
"They're comin', comin', comin'," shouted Winnie, from the door-steps, where, in the exuberance of his spirits, he was trying very hard to stand on his head, and making a most remarkable failure—"they're comin' lickitycut, and I'm five years old, 'n' I've got on my best jacket, 'n' they're comin' slam bang!"