Jack Waddles’s only trick was wrestling, but as he would not do it except with his mother, now that Jill had gone, he was excused, and Pinkie stepped forward with Hans, who obediently did the routine taught by her elder brother,—made a pinwheel of himself, sat up, saluted with his right paw, cheered for the Kaiser, and died for the Vaterland in so realistic a manner as to cause Sophie to shed tears, which, however, she soon wiped away, using the top of Silvie’s head for a handkerchief. Luck and Pluck were less conventional and more animated in their performance. They played leap-frog beautifully, stood and sat erect on their hind legs, and caught a handkerchief made into a ball in a very graceful way.
Next Silvie tiptoed forward, and after two trials sat up in a most comical and tipsy manner, and held a stick as if it was a gun, thereby so delighting her dear little roly-poly mistress that every one applauded loudly.
Blackberry the setter, being young and timid, was also excused, but when Jessie and Jack Lane, who had disappeared for a minute, returned with Toodles the spaniel, dressed in a cocked hat, Toby frill and sash, and made him tumble about like a clown in the circus, finally walking up between them to make his bow while they did jig steps, every one cheered.
Hamlet, of course, was the star performer, but then he was more like a professional appearing at amateur theatricals. This day he was extremely contrary, however, and his mistress had to give him two or three scoldings in rapid French, which sounded very mysterious to the others. But when it came to the dancing he threw himself into the spirit of it at once, and waltzed to Miss Letty’s whistling until she grew tired. Next he did his greatest feat, a sort of sailor’s hornpipe, in which he was obliged to stand erect and keep in motion, while he jerked his body forward continually as if he was pulling in rope.
This dance came to an abrupt ending because the tune which accompanied it struck Jack Waddles’s musical sensibilities, and caused him to bay in comic imitation of his father, thereby setting the others off in various keys, and causing such pandemonium that the Lanes’ groom rushed from the shrubbery, thinking “the scrimmage” had come.
Under cover of the noise Pinkie slipped into the house at a signal from Miss Letty to tell the waitress that it was high time to make the “real tea” and carry the eatables to the pantry on the stone wall behind the arbour. Then she remembered that she had forgotten to ask her mother for a basket for Hamlet’s waiter trick. “It’s too bad,” she muttered to herself behind the pantry door. “Miss Letty says it’s his queerest trick, and now it’s all spoiled.” As she looked up, the crack of the door gave her a glimpse into the dining room, and her eye rested upon the mahogany sideboard at the exact spot where, safe and high and out of reach, rested a pair of openwork silver cake baskets with hoop handles that had belonged to her great-grandmother, and were consequently much treasured by the family.
“The very thing,” she said, dropping her voice unconsciously to a whisper, “and a silver basket is lots properer than a straw one for a tea-party.”
It was evident that at this moment Pinkie’s guardian angel and her conscience had taken a walk together to the farthest end of the garden.
She pushed one of the big arm-chairs toward the sideboard, climbed from the seat to the back, secured the nearest of the precious baskets, flew to the pantry, emptied a box of five-o’clock teas into it, and covering the whole with a napkin, ran and placed it on the fence with the cakes and sandwiches, then sauntered back to her friends with a suspicious air of unconcern.
“It is of no use for us to have our tea until the dogs are served,” said Mistress Dorothy, picking her words, and speaking in manner and tone in perfect imitation of the way that some one of her elders might have said, “give the children their supper, and then we shall have ours in peace.”