Presently they all began to sing, Prue and Frances in their high sopranos, Oswyth in her sweet, low soprano, Rob in her soft alto, Basil a high tenor, Bruce, a barytone, and Bart something he sincerely believed was a heavy bass. People driving by stopped to look and listen, and Mr. Grey sat over his models in a happy dream, as the sound wafted in to him, while Mrs. Grey could hardly keep her mind on the cold meat she was slicing and the biscuits she was making for tea.
"Bless their dear, happy hearts!" she thought. "How little it takes to rejoice them. They won't know if I go without some little things to make up the trifling cost of their bee."
The work was only too short, it seemed to the girls, though perhaps the boys were glad to stop when Mrs. Grey came out on the steps at five and struck the brass-bowl, which was the Greys' Japanese way of summoning the family.
They had not attempted to mow the orchard, nor the land running down toward the back road, out of sight, but all that showed from the street was gloriously shaven, and Rob had run the lawn-mower over it, enjoying its speed.
The supper was not merely pretty. "It was distinguished," Frances told her friends later; she had a feminine instinct for old china.
"But it was not merely distinguished—it was extinguished—they ate every crumb," Rob retorted. "And so it must have been good."
It was good; even in a community of skilful housewives, Mrs. Grey's cooking was famous. The dishes were tucked away in a big wash-tub till morning—an indulgence the Greys sometimes allowed themselves—and "the little busy B's bee," as the name was now abbreviated, ended with the girls nestled together on the steps, while the boys disposed of their length of limb lower down, and they sang again while the little July moon dipped down before them, and disappeared in the west, and the stars came out.
Then Frances arose to go, and the Rutherford boys arose, too, to take her safely home, and then go their own ways.
"We're no end grateful to you for giving us the very nicest party we ever went to," said Basil to Mrs. Grey as he bade her good-night.
"Oh, as to that," Rob remarked, "one good cut deserves another."