"And I'll beat the eggs--I can beat eggs go nice and soap-suddy," boasted the Babe.
"That'll be a great help. We don't want any hit-or-miss cake. Everything's got to be properly weighed and measured and beaten. Now let's go see how Jonah's coming on with the harness."
Jonah, with the harness in a big cotton-basket which could be hidden from sight by throwing a horse-blanket over it if Mrs. Spooner happened along, was seated indoors, busily snipping and stitching and patching away at the rusty-looking leather.
"Now don't you-all come a-frustratin' me till I git th'ough with my job," fumed the old man, rather crossly, "'course, you'll 'low 'tain't much to look at--which I ain't a-denyin'--but jest wait till me'n the boy gits done--then jedge by ree-sults."
Roy sighed a little bit wistfully. "I did want to get something better, but my money barely held out for this."
"Something better?" scolded the girls, "who wants anything better?"
"A lovely, low-hung, leather-brown phaeton," added Elizabeth, alliteratively, "is a thing of beauty. Add brown cushions, brown harness and a perfectly-matching brown pony and it'll be too stylish for anything."
"That's sure 'seeing things', Elizabeth," laughed Roy. "Glad you believe in us. I'll work at the phaeton and try to have it looking as much as possible like your fancy picture by to-morrow. Jonah'll boss the harness job, and you girls can transform the cushions."
There were great preparations going on that day, right under Mrs. Spooner's unsuspecting eyes. The girls had ironed the clothes the day before, insisting that they required mending immediately, much to their mother's surprise, for they didn't usually bother about the mending.
There was indeed plenty of it to do, and, since Mr. Spooner's absence, very little money to buy new clothes, so that the best the patient mother could do was to mend and darn and patch, till, like the Cotter's wife, she "made old clothes look almost as well as new."