Meanwhile during all this great and absorbing preparation for the grand affair, Mother Pepper was casting busily about in her mind how to get some refreshments for the company; but try as she would, nothing seemed to suggest itself, until the remembrance of the glass of blackberry jelly that Deacon Blodgett’s wife had given her last summer, when making her fresh supply, came to her mind. There it was tucked away on the top shelf of the old cupboard. “Oh, I can’t take that,” said Mrs. Pepper to herself; “it’s so good in case of sickness.” But then—and she drew a long breath—would her little brood ever need it more than after this terrible disappointment that had threatened to make the Little Brown House the scene of despair? And surely when every household, in all probability, in the whole of Badgertown was to be drawn into the delights of the circus—all but hers—some sacrifices must be made to give what happiness she could to her children.
“They shall have it,” decided Mrs. Pepper to herself. “Now, what else can I find for them?”
But nothing else appearing, no matter how hard she thought as she stitched away, she sighed.
“Polly can bake some little biscuits,” she said to herself, “to go with the jelly.”
When the children were told that the precious glass of blackberry jelly was positively to be theirs for the feast to be prepared for the company, they were speechless with delight. Then came the great deliberation as to how to arrange it.
“We ought to have something to drink,” said Ben, “seeing we can’t have lemonade.”
“Oh, Ben, we couldn’t ever have lemonade,” exclaimed Polly.
“I said we couldn’t,” said Ben, “but we ought to have something; I thought folks always did when they had company, Polly.”
“O dear me, I know,” said Polly, quite distressed at the failure to be like other folks, “but we haven’t anything, Ben.”
“Why can’t we melt the jelly?” proposed Ben.