“Nor I, after that thrilling experience of yours!” said Alice, admiringly.
“I can think of no story half so delightful as the dreams we shall have if we go to bed,” murmured Edith from her cozy corner. “Come, it is after ten, and the wide bed calls loudly for occupants.”
In a half-hour all six were asleep, and the bright-faced moon, looking in at the piazza window, smiled as she saw the half-dozen heads in a row, and the bed surrounded by croquet mallets and balls.
CHAPTER III—AN EMERGENCY CASE
THE next morning broke clear, bright, and sparkling, but bitterly cold. I cannot attempt to tell you all the doings of that indefatigable and ingenious bevy of girls during the day. Miss Miranda, their opposite neighbor, had kept to her post of observation, the window, very closely, and had seen much to awaken scorn and surprise.
“Wa'al, Jane!” said she, excitedly, in the afternoon, “there they go ag'in! That's the fourth time the hoss has been harnessed into Allen's pung to-day; and now they've got their uncle. Whatever they find to laugh so over, and where they go to, is more'n I can see. They haven't done up their dinner dishes, I know, for I've been watching of 'em and they hain't had time to do 'em so quick as this, though Bell Winship is as spry as a skeeter when she gets a-goin'.”
Miss Miranda's organs of vision were better than magnifying glasses, for, aided by a lively imagination, they could dart around corners and through doors with great ease. Bell avowed confidentially to Patty that morning, when she met her neighbor's eyes fixed on the pantry window, that she believed Miss Miranda could see a fly-speck on top of a liberty-pole.
The girls had made the day a very long and lively one, and in the evening, their spirits still high and their inventive powers still unimpaired, they gave an impromptu concert. The audience was small but appreciative. Grandmother was in a private box—the high-backed arm-chair in the cosiest corner; Uncle Harry sat on a hastily-erected throne made by perching a stool on the dining-table, and being given a large pair of goggles, was requested to serve as dramatic and musical critic for the morning newspapers. Two or three of the boarders from Mrs. Carter's famous Winter Farmhouse on the hill, the young schoolmaster (a Bowdoin student earning his college course by odd terms of teaching), and Hugh Pennell, his chum and classmate, home on a brief holiday, made quite a brave show when seated in three rows, while the unaffected laughter, the open mouths, and the staring eyes of “the help,” Emma Jane Perkins, Betty Bean, and 'Bijah Flagg, who were grouped at the hall door, helped in the general merriment.