Oh, what a day that was! The toilers in the barn sent in word that they were too busy to stop for any dinner, and Susanna retorted that she was herself fully too busy to cook it for them. Everybody had a slice of bread and butter and a glass of milk, which didn't take a minute to dispose of. Even the mistress, who had returned, fared thus.
That afternoon Reuben Smith tooted up to Miss Maitland's front gate and handed out a paste-board box, very large and weighty, which Susanna hastily received and carried into the house. There it was hurriedly opened behind closed doors by Aunt Eunice, with her housemate to assist, and was found to contain a new suit of men's clothing, with all accessories needful.
"I'll carry them to poor Nathan at once, and make sure he puts them on. Then, if you're willing, we'll light a fire in your stove and burn all his old rags," said the mistress.
"Not alone, Eunice Maitland, not alone!" cried the old housekeeper, who wouldn't have missed this business if all the jumbles she had made had burned themselves to a crisp. Fortunately, they were out of the way, and though she had mixed dough for raisin-cake she hadn't yet put in "the lightenin'." "If we start to oncet there ain't nothin' to harm, an' the childern's so busy they'll never notice. Moses is asleep. Let's go right away. My suz! Seems if I couldn't wait to make that poor feller into a decent man!"
As excited and eager over their own secret as the young folks over theirs, they seized bonnets and wraps, and, carrying the box between them, slipped unobserved from the house in the direction of the woods.
Thus it chanced that they did not see what an unusual thing the stage-driver did; how that, leaving Miss Maitland's parcel at the front of the house, he drove by a roundabout lane to the back door of the barn, and there set down, with William's help, two barrel-like tubs, weighty with broken ice and carefully covered with bits of old carpet. Similar tubs had sometimes been brought to Marsden by the same messenger, but only for such occasions as the Fourth of July or the Sunday-school picnic. Never before for any private function, and the news of the present arrival spread swiftly through the village, suggesting to interested parents that, though themselves uninvited, it might be as well to go along and see what the children were doing!
And it came at last! The delightful hour, the culmination of all this preparation. At last, at last, the wheezy clock in the church steeple announced that it was seven o'clock!
Then from out the many homes of Marsden and its by-ways issued the eager guests. Girls in white frocks; boys in Sunday suits; all uncomfortable in freshly donned winter flannels—since this was to be a sort of out-doors party and there must be no afterclaps of croup; and elders in their second-best attire, worn with an affected indifference of its just happening so.
Said Mrs. Turner to Mrs. Clackett: "Course we wasn't asked. It's just a children's party that Johnny Maitland's little girl is giving as a sort of youngsters' 'infair.' Pa and me thought 'twas better to come along and see the children got there safe, them not being used to going out evenings."
To which her neighbor replied: "Yes, we feel that way about our girls and boy. But I confess, we're sort of curious to know what the 'Corkis' part of the invitation means. Clackett, he says he guesses Katy meant 'caucus,' but that don't throw no more light on the matter, if it does. What on earth a lot of young ones want with a 'caucus,' beats me. But here we are, and—My! Isn't it pretty?"