XX
THREE TO MAKE READY
Red mosquito-netting, preferably from peach baskets, was best for bottles of pink water. You soaked the netting for a time depending in length on the shade of pink you desired—light, deep, or plain. A very little red ink produced a beautiful red water, likewise of a superior tint. Violet ink, diluted, remained true to type. Cold coffee gave the browns and yellows. Green tissue paper dissolved into somewhat dull emerald. Pure blue and orange, however, had been almost impossible to obtain save by recourse to our paint boxes, too choice to be used in this fashion, or to a chance artificial flower on an accessible hat—of which we were not at all too choice, but whose utilization might be followed, not to say attended, by consequences.
That August afternoon we were at work on a grand scale. At the Rodmans, who lived on the top of the hill overlooking the town and the peaceful westward-lying valley of the river, we had chosen to set up a great Soda Fountain, the like of which had never been.
“It’s the kind of a fountain,” Margaret Amelia Rodman explained, “that knights used to drink at. That kind.”
We classified it instantly.
“Now,” she went on, “us damsels are getting this thing up for the knights that are tourmeying. If the king knew it, he wouldn’t leave us do it, because he’d think it’s beneath our dignity. But he don’t know it. He’s off. He’s to the chase. But all the king’s household is inside the palace, and us damsels have to be secret, getting up our preparations. Now we must divide up the—er—responsibility.”
I listened, spellbound.
“I thought you and Betty didn’t like to play Pretend,” I was surprised into saying.
“Why, we’ll pretend if there’s anything to pretend about that’s real,” said Margaret Amelia, haughtily.