"They need you so," said Mrs. Willis when she had a chance to speak confidentially to the wife of the circus agent.
"Not more than I need them," responded Mrs. Robinson. "They have no mother and I have no children."
And if the payment of the quarter's rent in advance had "turned the luck," as Alec insisted, it was the coming of Mrs. Robinson that turned the Gays back to normal, happy living.
Rosemary had stipulated that the "grown-ups" were to visit and leave the preparation of the supper to the children. Most of the preparation was confined to setting the table—on a flat rock—and to boiling the coffee and toasting the meat. Richard and Warren were in charge of the fire and Louisa and Rosemary undertook to set out the eatables, while Alec carried fresh water from the spring, fished out ants from the milk pitcher and endeavored to keep the younger fry from tasting everything left unguarded.
Sarah's insistence on toasting her own "hot dog" led to a general clamor for sticks and Doctor Hugh obligingly whittled a dozen wands. taking care to make them long as a precaution against a too eager approach to the fire.
The table looked very pretty when Rosemary summoned them, for a bouquet was in the center and tiny wreaths of flowers circled the paper dishes. Warren's coffee was pronounced delicious and Winnie received so many compliments on her stuffed eggs and the potato salad that she told Mrs. Hildreth it would serve her right if the cake should turn out to be soggy.
"Then," declared Mrs. Hildreth neatly, "I should know it was no cake of your baking!"
But one distressing incident interrupted the serene progress of that wonderful supper—when the paper cup of ants and bugs and beetles and flies that Sarah had captured before sitting down, upset directly into her saucer of home-made ice cream. Even that catastrophe could not mar the general enjoyment, though Sarah retired to fish out the bugs carefully by hand with the forlorn hope of "drying them off and saving them."
When the supper was over and everything cleared away, Warren built up the fire again and they gathered around it. The day had been warm but a slight chill was in the air—the early touch of fall.
"It doesn't seem as though we were going home to-morrow," remarked Rosemary pensively. "And school opens next week."