Pretty it was, and far, far more than pretty. To these unused eyes such a scene as might have come from fairy-land. Even to Aunt Eunice, newly admitted, the old barn seemed an unknown spot; and she sat enthroned upon her seat of honor—an oat-bin transformed by cushions of straw and sheaves of corn—amazed but equally delighted. The whole great structure was ablaze with radiance. Susanna's clothes-line and Moses' grapevine wire supported grinning Jacks innumerable. The glowing yellow heads looked down from rafter and beam, peeped from the stalls, dangled from stanchions. Between them gleamed also oddly shaped Chinese lanterns, and these were a form of illumination wholly new to that inland village. There were sheaves and vines and branches everywhere, and those who observed could scarcely believe that the whole transformation, save and beyond the carving of the pumpkins, had been wrought by three pairs of young hands.
What cared happy Kitty Keehoty that of all her crisp ten dollars there remained but thirteen cents? Hadn't they paid for all these shining candles, those tubs of cream, the grotesque lanterns which her new friends so admired, and the heaps of candy on the table at the far end of the great floor? The table was improvised by a couple of planks laid upon barrels and covered by a cloth borrowed from the linen closet. It would have been covered with nothing else, save the candy and a pile of wooden plates for the cream, had not Susanna produced her own surprise—in such stores of cakes and sandwiches and toothsome dainties as made the small giver of the function open her own eyes in amazement.
Oh, how delightful it all was! And didn't the pleasure in so many faces more than pay for the ten dollars spent and the proudly weary widow's hours at an oven door?
But how they came! So fast, so eager, so cordially willing to be pleased! All the young guests who had been bidden by such a painful outlay of pen and ink, and all their fathers and their mothers, "their uncles and their aunts and their cousins!" All the merrier, all the better, all the surer of success! For the best was yet to come. The delicious, ambitious, loving secret scheme which had originated in the teeming brain of Kitty Keehoty, and, aided and abetted by Montgomery, her knight, was now to be divulged.
"My—suz!" quoth Susanna, dismayed by the vast proportions of Katharine's "little party," "however—shall I give such a multitude—even a bite apiece?"
"I'll help!" cried Mrs. Clackett, quite understanding "a bite apiece" meant no personal violence. "I've lots of stuff baked at home. I'll fetch a basket of it in a jiffy."
"I, too!" echoed Mrs. Turner, and the pair set briskly homeward in neighborly kindness. Other matrons, not to be outdone, also disappeared from the assembly for a brief time; and soon thereafter William was called upon to improvise another table, till both were groaning with the weight of good things.
"My! It's most like a Sunday-school picnic, ain't it?" exclaimed the village seamstress, who at seventy years still had the same innocent enjoyment in such affairs as she had had at seven. "But, hush! Somethin's a-doin'!"
Something was certainly "a-doing!" There was a great bustle and stir at the double doors and in came Deacon Meakin, William, Mr. Clackett, and the schoolmaster, carrying a cot between them on which lay Moses Jones, at last minus his ball and chain, and feeling as if he didn't know himself—so utterly amazed was he. Amid a sudden outringing cheer the cot was carefully deposited in an open space that had been kept for it, close beside that throne where Eunice still sat smiling in gracious hospitality.
The fresh excitement incident to this arrival had scarcely died, when Madam Sturtevant appeared, with her small handmaid in train. The lady had been somewhat doubtful about accepting the invitation for herself, having been informed by her grandson that, outside The Maples' family, she was the only grown-up so favored except the schoolmaster; and she was more than doubtful for Alfaretta. For a time the anxious girl's fate hung in the balance. It did not strike Madam as just the correct thing to take a servant—Alfy was really that, of course—to a Maitland party. Yet the child had just as good blood in her veins as many others who would attend, even if her lot in life were less fortunate. Besides, was it right to disturb her quiet habits by such frivolity? While the matter was pending, Alfaretta could only calm her perturbed mind by gathering every belated daisy she could find and testing her fortune upon its white petals. "Shall I be let to go? Shall I not?" Mostly, the daisies said: "I shall!" Yet it was old Whitey who, after all, decided the question.