“Is it? Then we mustn’t wait another minute. If Aunt Abigail is back from her walk, she may be hungry too.” Aunt Abigail had been invited to attend the preliminary inspection of the schoolroom, but had declined, frankly avowing her preference for a walk. Jerry had told her of a somewhat rare fern growing half a mile from the cottage, and Aunt Abigail who intermittently was an enthusiastic amateur botanist had professed a desire to see this particular species in its native haunts.
“Don’t hurry, Peg,” pleaded Amy, as the procession headed for the cottage at a more rapid pace than Amy approved on a summer morning. “It’s more than likely that she isn’t home yet. You know she never thinks anything about the time if she’s interested.”
As Amy’s conjecture was based on an intimate knowledge of Aunt Abigail’s peculiarities, no one was surprised to find it correct. The front door of the cottage was locked, and the key was hanging on a nail in full view, a custom of the trusting community which had gradually come into favor at Dolittle Cottage. The girls trooped indoors, and preparations for dinner began forthwith, even Dorothy lending her aid. Dorothy loved to shell peas, that ordinarily prosaic task being enlivened by the certainty that she would drop at least two-thirds of the agile vegetables, and be compelled to pursue them into the most unlikely hiding-places.
The peas were shelled at last, and Dorothy comforted for the untimely fate of several luckless spheres which had rolled under the feet of preoccupied workers, and, according to Dorothy, had been “scrunched.” Another twenty minutes and Peggy announced that dinner was ready. “If Aunt Abigail would only come. Things won’t be so good if they wait.”
“I won’t be so good if I wait, either,” Dorothy declared. “’Cause it makes me cross to get hungry.”
Dorothy was provided with an aid to uprightness in the shape of a slice of bread and butter, and the others seated themselves on the porch to await Aunt Abigail’s return. It is an open secret that time spent in waiting invariably drags. The wittiest find their ideas deserting them under such circumstances. The most congenial friends have nothing to say to each other. There are, as a rule, any number of things one can do while one is waiting, but unluckily there is nothing one feels inclined to do. Up till one o’clock conversation was spasmodic. For the next half hour silence reigned, and each face became expressive of a sense of injury and patient suffering. At quarter of two, open revolt was reached.
“Peggy, how much longer are you going to wait?” Amy demanded. “Everything is probably spoiled by now.”
Peggy did her best to be encouraging. “Oh, not exactly spoiled. But it doesn’t do a dinner any good to wait an hour or two after it is cooked.”
“Why not sit down? She’s sure to be here by the time we’re fairly started,” suggested Ruth.
“I’d as soon wait as not.” Claire’s face was angelically patient. “I haven’t a bit of appetite any more. I suppose it’s because my head always begins to ache so if I don’t eat at the regular hour.”