AN ASTONISHING QUESTION
"Everybody's here, with all his first wife and children!" cried somebody, facetiously, as the tin horn was blown to summon the men from their labors in the field to their dinner.
"So they be! So they be! yonder comes Mis' Babcock with all her flock, root and branch. Reckoned she'd strike Skyrie about feedin' time; but there's plenty, plenty for everyone; and she's a nice woman, a hard worker an' kind neighbor. Sho! Look at Seth Winters! If that man ain't a kind of a mesmeriser, or somethin' like it! for he's actually coaxed that proud Miss Montaigne to join the merry throng! Fact. I just seen him escortin' her through the gate, an', Dorothy! mind you put on your best manners an' treat her real polite, like city folks is supposed to know how. Since she's put her pride in her pocket an' come, I'd like to have her see she ain't the only young lady up-mounting. 'Cause you belong now, you know; you're one of us. Go meet her, whilst I fix another chair right alongside her ma and Mis' Calvert!" directed Mrs. Smith, handing the girl a plate of rusk, with the added injunction: "Take special care o' them biscuit, too, child. I made them myself, I did, an' I want the 'ristocratics to have first chance at 'em. If some them men folks tackle them on the road to table, there won't be nothin' left of them but the plate. Take care! I—Why, I don't believe she heard a word I said!"
Dorothy had heard in part. She obediently carried the plate to the table, though not to that part of it which its owner had designated, and she had answered: "Yes, Mrs. Smith, I will try." But she had suddenly perceived a forlorn figure, leaning against the stone wall that separated the field from the road, and her interest centered on that.
Poor Peter Piper was peering wistfully into that busy, happy, laughing assemblage of people, as if he longed to be among them yet felt himself shut out. He had not heard about the "Bee," and even if he had might not have comprehended what it meant. Had he been at the blacksmith's home once after the scheme was started, Seth would assuredly have given the half-wit as courteous a chance to share in the fun and labor of that day as he had given all his other neighbors. But Peter had not been seen by anybody who knew him since that visit of his to Skyrie, in company with old Brindle. He had departed then, frowning and greatly troubled. Why, his clouded mind could not understand; but something had gone wrong. The once deserted farm had become the home of strangers and he could visit it no more. Thus much he felt and knew; and that night he disappeared.
However, the poor fellow's absences were so frequent that nobody missed him from the neighborhood and Dorothy had utterly forgotten him. Now, as she saw him, her heart throbbed with pity.
"He looks as if this picnic were Paradise, and he shut out! I'm going to ask him here!"
With a swoop upon it Mrs. Smith rescued her fine rusk from the plebeian appetites which would have consumed it and carried it triumphantly to the "aristocratic" end of the head table, then stood arms akimbo, staring after Dorothy and ejaculating:
"If that don't beat all my first wife's relations! That chit of a child set down the biscuit, but she snatched up a big cake worth twice as much. She's going to coax that simpleton with it, just as a body has to coax a wild critter to come an' be caught. And I plain told her that Helena Montaigne was here, and 'twas her chanst to make friends with her. Pshaw! I don't believe that Dorothy Chester cares a pin whether she gets in with rich folks or not! 'Tain't five minutes ago 't I heard her sassin' Herbert same as she might one my own boys. Don't stand in awe of nobody, Dorothy don't, an' yet nobody gets mad at her. 'Course, I don't begrudge Peter Piper a mouthful o' victuals. None of us would, but what's left over after the rest is done would be plenty good enough for him. Huh! All that splendid chocolate cake—five-layer-thick!"
As Dorothy approached the wall Peter dodged behind it and, for a moment, she thought he had run away. If he had she meant to follow; and with the ease that her long practice in chasing Hannah had given her she vaulted over the wall to pursue. But he had not run, and she landed on the further side plump beside him where he sat huddled against the stones.