She was disappointed, and, at first, a little angry. Then she had to laugh at the remembrance of her own chagrin.

And to think of that dancing, shrieking, black-haired Jinny leading such a charge and bombardment. What control she must have over her brothers and sisters, to make them give up the peanuts and popcorn. It must have been a wrench for the babies to throw away the goodies.

Then Janice began to look more closely at the missiles with which she had been showered. There wasn’t much of the pink and white popcorn; and the nuts seemed all to have been shelled out before the husks were thrown at her! She was sure this was not according to Jinny’s plan; the little virago had been too much in earnest. But her small brothers—and perhaps the big ones—had fooled her. They had shelled the “goobers” before flinging the waste at Janice and her car.

CHAPTER XIII
THE LAWN PARTY

The Ladies’ Aid gave, as it did every summer, a lawn party in Major Price’s front yard. The big mansion, which had been built by some Price ancestor, was always thrown open to the guests at that time. Mrs. Price and her two maids, with Maggie’s help, cleaned and furbished for a week previous to the annual event. New curtains were hung, the rugs were beaten, and of late years a vacuum-cleaner was imported to do much of the heavy work for the women-folk. Major Price was not a niggard, although he was “as old-fashioned as the hills,” his wife declared. And the Vermont hills are very old-fashioned, indeed!

The Major was a portly man who advertised his station as the magnate of Polktown by the wearing of a white shirt with a stiff, short bosom, every day in the week. The linen was immaculate, but his torso, swollen by good feeding, seemed about to burst through the shirt.

The old man had a jovial voice, a great mop of silvery hair, watery blue eyes which usually held a twinkle swimming in their moist depths, and enormous, hairy hands which of late had begun to shake a little. He was smoothly shaven—scrupulously so every morning—and his complexion was ruddy. This was fortunate, too, for it made comparison less odious between his sagging cheeks and his nose. The latter was swollen and angry-looking and it was whispered that the Major was a secret drinker.

However, the old gentleman and his family placed the full resources of their house and grounds at the disposal of the church ladies. The latter and all the young girls and boys they could enmesh in the scheme worked for two days preparing the tables, decorating the trees with strings of Japanese lanterns, putting up bunting, gathering flowering branches from the woods, and doing a thousand and one things to decorate and make the old yard more attractive.

Janice and her car were requisitioned, and it brought many a load to the gate of the Price place. That week was a busy one for her, for in a few days more the seminary would open and she was brushing up the studies that she had dropped months before.

This lawn party was really the first public entertainment at which the younger element of Polktown society could display the influence exerted upon it by the coming and appearance of Annette Bowman. Mrs. Hutchins (and presumably Mr. John-Ed., head of the basting-pulling department) had been very, very busy for more than a fortnight. Every other woman who pretended to do dressmaking in Polktown had likewise been engaged to the full.