“Why, who ever heard of an attic like this?” cried a senior girl. “You have electric lights and rugs on the floor and—everything!”
It was a pretty scene. Judge Gordon had consented to having candles on the table. These were yellow and white, a little brown supplied here and there by a narrow crepe paper ribbon, among the table decorations. Yellow and white flowers were not hard to find, for syringa and white peonies happened to be in blossom and Leigh’s mother had some creamy roses in her greenhouse.
The rugs were a temporary loan, except those in the inner sanctum, and had been gathered up from the various S. P. homes. Interesting decorations in different corners and the large posters caught the young eyes at once, but they did not need much urging to find their place cards at once, as Jean said that the “picture gallery would be on display after supper.” The electric bulbs were covered with yellow shades, but only two of them were turned on, as it was more “intriguing,” Leigh said, to have the chief light come from the candles.
The long tables were covered with white linen. The fruit mixture known as fruit cocktail was already at the places, also the salad, and plates of rolls, jellies, honey, pickles and olives, were properly arranged, to avoid much serving. As soon as the fruit was eaten, the girls removed the glasses and plates and brought the savory plates of chicken pie, mashed potatoes and gravy, and peas in little crinkled patties. Mrs. Gordon served the chicken pie and Molly filled the patties with peas, either of them putting on the potato and gravy, while Jean and Nan hurried the plates to the table in record time. Then Mrs. Gordon escaped to the regions below, where a genial judge would be more genial when he had his supper. The waitresses, too, sat down to enjoy themselves, for Jean would need only to replenish the fresh rolls from the covered pans on the side table, or hop up to serve a second platter of chicken pie, ready to be filled and passed. This was a supper where everything was to be eaten up, and the Black Wizards did justice to it. By the time they were ready for the ice-cream, they would have done anything the S. P.’s wanted, so far as willing spirit was concerned, but Jimmy told Jean that he hoped they wouldn’t be called on to perform right after a “supper like that.”
“We shall dawdle over our ice-cream,” Jean assured him, “and no guest of the S. P.’s is going to do anything he doesn’t feel like doing.”
“Hurrah,” said one sophomore Wizard, but he was silenced by a look from the Grand Wizard which warned him that he must mind his p’s and q’s.
Mrs. Gordon, through with her own and the judge’s dinner, came up to help with the change of courses, to put into the baskets the plates brought from the tables by the girls and to serve the ice-cream.
“Did you S. P.’s bake this cake?” asked Danny Pierce, with a fork neatly separating a bit from a piece of the cake known as devil’s food.
“No, we didn’t,” Jean replied, “but we’re going to learn. That is in one of the S. P. departments, as you might say.”
“Cooking?” asked Danny.