“My dear daughter, can I never make you understand that little ladies may not do everything their brothers do?”
“I don’t care, Mother, I’m sick of hearing about ladies, and if bully is so vulgar, I don’t see why it isn’t vulgar when a boy says it. You expect Ernest 343to be a gentleman, don’t you, just as much as you do me to be a lady?”
“Come, Chicken Little, don’t speak to your mother that way,” Dr. Morton reproved her.
Mrs. Morton was more severe.
“You may go to your room and remain until you can address your mother respectfully, my daughter.”
Frank’s plan was carried out. There were no formal invitations issued. Frank and Dr. Morton and Jim Bart spoke to every neighbor they met for the next few days, inviting them to come to an April Fool frolic at seven on the evening of April first, and asking them to pass the invitation along to the other residents of Big John. Chicken Little and Sherm rode over to give Captain Clarke a special invitation, fearing he might not have become sufficiently used to Creek ways to come on the more general bidding.
The Captain was charmed and begged leave to send Wing over to help that evening. Wing delighted in every new experience he was having on the Creek. He grinned joyously at the prospect.
The entire Morton family entered into the preparations for this novel party with enthusiasm. Even Jilly and Huz and Buz caught the excitement of something unusual going on, and hung round, and got under everybody’s feet, more successfully than usual. Jilly had the privilege of scraping icing bowls 344while Huz and Buz looked enviously on. They licked their sticky chops ecstatically when Jilly turned the bowl over to them after she had done her best with the big tin spoon. Her mother reproached her for letting the pups eat out of one of the family dishes, but Jilly couldn’t see why her mother was so particular.
Mrs. Morton and Annie and Marian baked cakes and doughnuts and cookies and mince pies and custard pies, and roasted turkeys and whole hams, until pantry and cellar and spring house were all overflowing. It would be a never-ending reproach, if there should not be an abundance for all who might come, and no one could even guess how many would come.
“It looks like enough for a regiment,” said Mrs. Morton wearily, dropping into a rocking chair on the afternoon of the thirty-first day of March.