Delia and Calista and Margaret Amelia and Betty Rodman I loved with devotion. And Mary Elizabeth I likewise loved with devotion. Therefore, the fact that my four friends would not, in the language of the wise and grown world, “receive” Mary Elizabeth was to me bitter and unbelievable.
This astounding situation, more than intimated on the day of the picnic, had its confirmation a few days after the advent of Mary Elizabeth in the New Family, when the six of us were seated on the edge of the board walk before our house. It was the middle of a June afternoon, a joyous, girlish day, with sun and wind in that feminine mood which is the frequent inheritance of all created things.
“I could ’most spread this day on my bread like honey, and eat it up, and not know the difference,” said Mary Elizabeth, idly. “The queen’s honey—the queen’s honey—the queen’s honey,” she repeated luxuriously, looking up into the leaves.
Delia leaned forward. It particularly annoyed her to have Mary Elizabeth in this mood.
“One, two, three, four, five of us,” Delia said, deliberately omitting Mary Elizabeth as, for no reason, she counted us.
Mary Elizabeth, released from tasks for an hour or two before time to “help with the supper,” gave no sign that she understood, save that delicate flush of hers which I knew.
“Yes,” she assented lazily, “one, two, three, four, five of us—” and she so contrived that five was her own number, and no one could tell whom of us she had omitted.
“Let’s play something,” I hurriedly intervened. “Let’s play Banquet.”
Action might have proved the solvent, but I had made an ill-starred choice. For having selected the rectangle of lawn where the feast was to be spread, Mary Elizabeth promptly announced that she had never heard of a banquet for five people, and that we must have more.
“We’ve got six,” corrected Delia, unwarily.