CHAPTER XIII
“Hester, ‘we have arrived,’ as they say in France. This has been a momentous month. We’ve sent out our cards and bought our first groceries at wholesale.” Julie leaned her elbows on the kitchen table and gazed with a rapt meditative air at their first barrel of sugar.
Bridget stood in the doorway openly admiring. “It’s like old times, Miss Julie dear, to be seein’ things come in quantities agen.” She had secretly harbored a grudge against the miserable little paper bags.
Peter Snooks sniffed at the unfamiliar barrel and then sat down beside it with a comical air of importance, but Hester did not leave him long undisturbed, for in wild exuberance of spirits she executed a war-dance in which he joined, at the end of which she mounted the barrel and with arms extended made a speech.
“Ladies and gentlemen (the gentlemen’s you, Snooks);
“This is the proudest moment of my life!”
Having delivered herself of this burst of eloquence she paused a moment dramatically, then plunged into such a torrent of nonsense that Bridget buried her head in her apron to stifle her laughter, Peter Snooks barked frantically in a fit of delight and Julie pulled the young orator down ignominiously.
“Come into the other room,” she said. “Daddy is asleep and I don’t want you to wake him.”
Instantly subdued, Hester tip-toed down the hall, following her sister.
“Are we going to discuss affairs of state?” she whispered.