“They can all come,” Adele announced, as she arose from the desk on which the phone stood, and then, taking Eva by the hand, she dragged her gayly toward the kitchen.
“We’ll help Kate do the supper work,” she announced, “and then we can be getting the place ready for the party.”
With so many helping hands, the room was soon in apple-pie order. Adele explained to Eva about the club to which her brother belonged. “It’s the luckiest thing,” she declared. “There are just seven girls in our club and there are seven boys in Jack’s, so when we give parties we have an even number. Not that we pair off. I don’t believe that any of the boys like one girl more than another. They are just our brothers, you see. Of course, being boys, they are not content to have a nice quiet club like ours. Last year they had been reading Cooper, so they called themselves ‘The Mohicans,’ and such blood-curdling yells as they could give. Sometimes they would dress up like Indians and paint their faces and swoop down upon us girls when we were in the woods, and, truly, they would frighten us, even though we knew perfectly well who they were. This year they are reading Stevenson, and so their club is The Jolly Pirates. They have elected Jack as their chief, and they call him Pirate the Terrible.”
Just then the front-door bell rang and Adele skipped away, soon to return with five girls, all of whom welcomed Eva gladly, and then laughingly they made deep curtsies to Jack, who had just appeared. That good-looking boy, in return, bowed in most courtly fashion.
A few moments later another bell rang, and Adele, opening the side-door, peered out into the gathering darkness.
On the porch stood six boys. The head of each was covered with a black, shroud-like cloth, and in a melancholy tone they chanted:
“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest.
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.”
“Oh, boys!” Adele exclaimed. “Do take off those dreadful black things! You give me the shivers, even though I do know who you are.”
But the six black figures stood motionless, and then one asked, in a deep, gruff voice, “Is this the home of Pirate the Terrible?”
“Yes, it is,” laughed Adele, “but he isn’t so very terrible just now, for he has on a calico apron and he’s cracking nuts for the fudge.”