“I smell it!” announced Glory, en route. “It’s pop corn!”
“Without doubt,” agreed Trixy. “Are we invited?”
“I hear Pat’s voice, so we are. I’ll also offer to pay for the corn. I just have got to do something rash to wind up this perfect day,” set forth Gloria.
A hail greeted the entrants to the kitchen.
“Say it with pop corn! We’re on the last round!” shouted Pat, “and Maud’s ahead. Listen to her popper! It’s a regular gatling gun. If they only knew about that when war was on! Come over here, Glo dear, and sitteth beside me. I’m grinding out the record with this yar egg beater——”
A volley from the egg beater announced the contest closed, with Maud Hunter’s popper full of white puffs “without any, or at least without many, blanks,” while her opponent, Margie Baker, blamed bad corn and an uncertain fire for her failure to score.
“But it’s all first rate,” declared the official taster, Georgia Graham, trying to sprinkle salt over the big yellow bowl of pop corn and pour butter upon it, simultaneously.
“It’s the Dove’s treat,” Pat explained. “We’re all through for the day and, my word! But we are tired! Those who haven’t been essaying have been cramming—— How’s Jack?”
Trixy and Gloria gratefully took places on the stationary wash tubs and received their share of pop corn on nice, clean enamel pie tins. Such a treat could only be enjoyed in a school like Altmount, small enough and large enough for the necessary social conditions. Twenty girls were crowded into the kitchen, with the understanding that all would be out, and that they would leave things “just as they had found them,” before five o’clock.
Until that time the pop corn squad did full justice to the confidence reposed in them, and as Pat put it “a pleasant time was had by all,” although Margie choked on a blank, and Isobel fell off the step ladder, and Louise nearly flooded the place by turning on the hot water faucet and losing the trail in a whirl-wind of steam.