“It’s a white splendor.” Marjorie stood beside Jerry peeping at the cake as her chum removed the box lid. “I’ve made the sandwiches.” She nodded toward a side table carefully covered with a snowy lunch cloth. “I cracked the walnuts for the brown bread ones and also my thumb.” She ruefully put the injured member in her mouth.
“How you must have suffered!” Jerry solemnly exclaimed. Both girls began to laugh. “Leila was in one of her fine frenzies because we couldn’t find a real cake or any stuffed dates.”
“I was that,” notified an affable agreeing voice from the opened door. “Did not the people of Hamilton all have their mouths set for sweet cakes today?” Leila closed the door and joined her chums. “We could find nothing we wanted.”
“Until in despair we went over to a new bakery on Gorman Street that just opened yesterday. The woman who keeps it is German. She has yellow hair and looks just like a pound cake,” Jerry described with enthusiasm.
“And our dream of a cake was in the window!” exclaimed Leila. “We thought we would eat it ourselves and tell no one, but we have such honor about us. We could not bear to think of those who would have no cake.” She smiled broadly upon Marjorie.
“You are a pair of fakes. You’ve been out having a fine spin while I’ve been in working hard. The minute dinner’s over you two may make the fruit salad. That will be your job,” Marjorie sternly pronounced sentence on the buoyant, hilarious pair.
“I will make forty fruit salads to please you, Beauty, though I do not know how to make one. Behold in me a helpful Harper.”
“You mean a harpful helper,” corrected Jerry.
“If you mean I am a harp, then I must tell you you are right. I do not know how you guessed it.” Leila gazed at Jerry in mock admiration.
“Dinner won’t mean much to us tonight,” commented Marjorie as she proudly raised the lunch cloth to allow the girls to see the tempting generous stacks of small, three-cornered sandwiches, the relishes and various other toothsome viands always welcomed by girlhood at a spread. “Remember, we are to take nothing but soup at dinner. It’s to be cream of celery. I asked Ellen.”