Oh, it was all very well for Preston to whistle! It didn’t trouble him, of course, for he wasn’t going to the party! He stopped in a few minutes at Mr. Garland’s beautiful brown house with the green vines around it, and made a low bow as he said “Good-bye.”
Flaxie scowled. What would Fanny Townsend and Blanche Jones and all the other nice girls say to see her bringing along such a train of dirty gypsies? She and Milly kept close together, never turning their heads till they came to the place “on the bank up there somewhere,” where they were to have the party.
Fanny and Blanche, and nearly everybody else, had arrived already, in clean frocks, with faces just washed; and, dear! dear! who wanted those Proudfits? But the little girls in Laurel Grove were for the most part very well-bred, so they said, “How do you do, Patty?” and “How do you do, Gretty?” and “How do you do, Baby?” just as if they had expected the whole family; though it was really a picnic party, and nobody had a right to come to it without an invitation. Patty kept close beside Flaxie; but Bubby, the fourteen months’ old baby, made himself generally disagreeable by wiping the candy and sand off his hands upon the little girls’ skirts.
“Let’s play something,” said Flaxie nervously.
It was a beautiful place to play. There were trees for hide-and-seek, flat spots for croquet, and little hills and hollows for everything else. The village children used this for a sort of park, and the river seemed to look on and laugh to see them so gay. It was a very sober, steady river above and below, but right here it went leaping and tumbling over some rocks, making a merry cascade,—just for fun, you would think. The children liked to skip stones and see them spin up and down in the foam; but they had been warned not to go too near the bank. Nobody had ever fallen in yet, but it wasn’t a safe place for very little folks, certainly not for roly-poly babies like Bubby Proudfit. He was very clumsy, falling down, rolling over, and picking himself up again every five minutes. Patty meant to watch him, but he was not very interesting, and the little girls quite bewitched her with their kind smiles and pretty ways.
Flaxie Frizzle was one of the youngest, but led off in most of the games. She was little Eva, and died on a bed of grass “elegantly,” while everybody else groaned and howled, especially poor Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom was Milly, in a black mask of Preston’s, which had been played with till it was cracked in fifty places, and made Uncle Tom look about two hundred years old.
Then they had the “Old Woman in the Shoe,” and Flaxie was a fierce and cruel mother, whipping her children so “soundly” that you could hear them scream half a mile off.
Patty thought all this was beautiful, and a longing look came into her bold black eyes, as she gazed at the old woman.
“Oh, if I could wear red stockings, with flowers on them, like Flaxie! If I could be a doctor’s little girl, and live in a house with blinds and trees and flowers, and have a cousin come to see me!”
It wasn’t strange that Patty should feel like this, and want to cover up her bare feet in the grass; but in admiring Flaxie she forgot entirely to watch Bubby, and that was a great mistake. He didn’t care, he never liked to be watched; it was fine fun to see the whole world before him and go just where he chose. Didn’t the trees and grass and flowers all belong to him! To be sure they did, and he meant to carry some of them home. But while he was trudging about, and making up his little mind where he would begin to pull, he espied the river sparkling in the sun, and that was finest of all. “Pitty, pitty!” cried he, and thought he would carry the river home too. How nice it would be to splash in! He fairly shouted at the idea, for having never seen a bath-tub, he hadn’t learned to be afraid of soap and water. “Pitty, pitty!” said he, toddling down with outstretched hands toward the dashing, dancing, merry, white cascade; while the children, running away from the terrible old woman, and trying to see which could scream loudest, never saw or heard him at all.