Robin refrained from saying she hoped it would snow, for if Harkness and Budge enjoyed fussing over the dreadful party she did not want to spoil their anticipation.
The entire house seemed ridiculously astir over the approaching event; extra help came from the village, the air throbbed with the hum of vacuum cleaners, chairs and tables were beaten with a frenzied thoroughness, tables polished, everything dusted. Certainly, no one was going to see that things were going to sixes and sevens!
Robin and Beryl busied themselves making over one of Robin's dresses for Beryl, a process to which Beryl consented only after a stormy scene and tears on Robin's part.
Robin's plans for her House of Laughter had to be tucked away for the time, and when she sighed now and then over her ripping and stitching it was because she'd so much rather be making frilly, crispy curtains for those little windows.
CHAPTER XIV
A GIFT TO THE QUEEN
By no means had the girls forgotten their Dowager Queen of Altruria. They talked of her often; Beryl usually in a speculative vein. Had she brought the court jewels with her? Did that dreadful Brina kneel on one knee and kiss the hem of her garment? Did she ever wear her crown?
Royalty meant much more to Beryl than it did to Robin, for Beryl attached to it a personal interest. Would she not, as sure as anything, sometime play before crowned heads by royal command? Sometimes, lying wide-eyed in the dark, she pictured herself at such a moment, gorgeously gowned, and delightfully disdainful of the bejeweled, becrowned, stately kings and queens and little princelings, dukes and duchesses and earls and countesses, all hanging on the exquisite notes she drew from her strings. After she finished they would forget their crowns and things and fall upon her in a sort of humble adoration. Beryl shivered exquisitely, she could make the picture so very real! Now, when she dreamed, the queens and duchesses looked like the mysterious mistress of the house by the Rushing Water.