Chapter 4 A BUSY AFTERNOON

The breeze which had lingered by the honeysuckle, climbing over the back porch of the Raymond cottage, did not carry to the next-door neighbors any whiffs of refreshing fragrance. For before it crossed the hedge, which marked the boundary line between the two places, it had picked up an odor very different. And Peggy Raymond's paint-pot was responsible.

Peggy was arrayed in what she called her regimentals. They consisted of an old shirtwaist, the sleeves cut off at the elbows, a calico skirt, and a pair of shabby shoes, all of which articles were splashed with paint of different colors. The landscape which hung in Peggy's mother's room, and which had been the cause of so much discussion in the family, was not responsible for any part of this rainbow effect. When Peggy donned her "regimentals," her artistic instincts took an entirely different turn.

Standing upon several newspapers, spread out for the protection of the grass in the Raymond back yard, was a chair. It was a rather dilapidated chair, judged from the standpoint of an unbiassed spectator. Its cane seat had long ceased to be practical for purposes of support, and its battered, scarred appearance suggested that it had been used as a target for missiles singularly effective. But Peggy regarded it with a look of pleased anticipation, not unmixed with pride.

The can of paint, which, lending its odor to the breeze, had quite submerged the fragrance of the honeysuckle, stood conveniently near the chair, and Peggy was absorbed in transferring the contents of the one to the battered surface of the other. The first results of the transference did not impress the beholder as successful, for the chair had been painted black in the first place, and the original hue, showing distinctly through the coat of paint, suggested a brown cheek veiled in white. But, undisturbed by her failure to produce the effect she wanted, without any irritating delays, Peggy worked away cheerily, humming a tune under her breath, and so absorbed was she in her task that she did not hear a light step coming across the grass. Her first intimation that she was not alone was when a somewhat hesitating voice said, "I beg your pardon."

With a start Peggy looked up. At the sight of Elaine her face crinkled into a smile of such unmistakable pleasure that only a very peculiar person could have felt indifferent to being its exciting cause.

"Why, it's you, isn't it?" exclaimed Peggy radiantly, springing from her knees with a haste which came near to overturning the can of paint. "I can't ask you to take a chair, because the only chair there is is pretty well covered with paint by now. But I'll pull out the wheelbarrow--"

"O, I can't stay long enough to sit down," Elaine said hastily. She was on the point of saying more, but quite unconscious that she was interrupting, Peggy broke in.

"I suppose you wondered what I was doing. You see one of the chairs in my bed-room went to pieces the other day. Amy was sitting on it at the time, and she was quite mortified. Amy is plump, and she decided right away that she wouldn't eat any more candy for six months, if she was getting so big that ordinary furniture wouldn't bear her weight." Peggy interrupted herself by an infectious laugh and chattered on, "And so I've got to have a new chair--"

"A new chair," repeated Elaine, surprise causing her to give a rather impolite emphasis to the adjective.

Peggy laughed again. "The new things for my room are a good deal like some folks' new dresses, the made-over, new kind, you know. But I almost think I like them all the better. Take this chair, for instance." Peggy indicated the article in question by a sweeping gesture of her paint brush. "It isn't much to look at just now."

"No!" Elaine acknowledged, apparently glad to find a point on which she could agree with Peggy. "It isn't."

"It'll have to have quite a number of coats," Peggy explained. "And when the paint is thick enough, so that the black doesn't show through, I'll tack a square of blue denim over the seat. If you put it on with braid and gilt-headed tacks, it is quite effective."

Elaine's start was not due to admiration for the glowing picture Peggy's words had conjured up, but rather to consternation over her own negligence. "O, I forgot!" she exclaimed, and hesitated. She was so plainly embarrassed that Peggy felt vaguely uncomfortable herself. But she did not have time to wonder why, before Elaine was launched on an explanation.

"Mamma sent me over to say that she objects to the smell of paint, and to ask if you would mind--"

Elaine hesitated again. Her air of confusion did not seem consistent with the impression Peggy had formed of her. As for Peggy herself, she was equally divided between sympathy for the bearer of the message, and regret over her interrupted task.

"I suppose I should have stopped to think which way the wind was blowing," she said quickly. "But somehow I never can remember that some people dislike the smell of paint. It seems so clean, and it always makes me think how nice things are going to look when you are done." She studied the unfinished chair, and suppressed a sigh. "I'll just dab a little more paint on this round, and then I'll set it in the woodshed and wait till the wind is from the east."

Peggy gave her attention to a particularly battered portion of the chair's anatomy, till she was aroused from her absorption by a question. The voice which asked it was intense, almost tragically so, in striking contrast to the serenity of the afternoon.

"Don't you hate, hate, hate to be poor?"

A big spot of white paint added itself to the decoration of the calico skirt, as Peggy stared up at her interrogator. "Why, I don't know," she acknowledged, "I guess I never thought about it."

"Not thought about it? Why, how can you help it when you have to do things like this?" Elaine made a scornful gesture, in the direction of the woe-begone chair. "Just suppose that all you had to do when you wanted something new was to go and buy it."

Peggy laughed a little. "I'm afraid my imagination isn't equal to that," she replied cheerily. "And, anyway, this sort of thing is such fun!"

"Fun!" echoed Elaine, with an incredulous gasp.

"Why, yes! To take something like this chair and fix it up so that it is useful and pretty is real fun. And so are lots of things about housework. There's cooking, now."

"I don't know a thing about cooking." Elaine had moved a little nearer Peggy, as if afraid of losing something. Her air of interest was unmistakable.

"Well, I love it all, but the nicest part, I think, is taking the left-overs, you know, the cold potatoes, and the ends of the steak, and fixing them up into real nice appetizing dishes."

"I tried getting luncheon to-day," Elaine acknowledged. "I was going to make an omelette because I thought that would be easy. It burned to start with, and then instead of puffing up light, it flattened out till it was just like india-rubber. And Mamma can't cook any better. I don't know what we are going to do."

Peggy looked sympathetically at the troubled face beside her. "Why, if you'd like," she began, then hesitated, remembering her past experience. But having started the sentence there seemed no way out of finishing it. "I'll be glad to show you all I know," she ended with a gulp.

Apparently the present Elaine, staring moodily at Peggy's handiwork, bore little resemblance to the Elaine who had frigidly declined the cinnamon rolls. She drew a long, sighing breath, "I'd like to learn," she replied. "But I'm afraid I'd be dreadfully stupid about it."

It was Peggy's habit to strike while the iron was hot. "It's Sally's day out," she said. "I'm going to get supper. Wouldn't you like a lesson this afternoon?"

"Are you sure it wouldn't be a bother?"

Peggy's ears had not deceived her. The friendly offer had not been declined. With a face as radiant as if she had just received notification of a legacy, she hurried to make arrangements with her prospective pupil.

"Come over about four. That'll give us lots of time for experiments." She carried the half-painted chair into the woodshed in a jubilant mood, which was rather remarkable considering that she had been prevented from finishing the task on which she had started. Lake all energetic people Peggy detested interruptions. But this was too much of a red-letter day for her to allow herself to be depressed by trifles.

Promptly at four Elaine presented herself, wearing over her black serge dress a little embroidered apron, about the size of a pocket-handkerchief. Peggy regarded the lace-edged affair with an amazement which Elaine mistook for admiration.

"Pretty, isn't it?" she said, glancing down at it complacently. "It was a Christmas present."

"It would be fine for a chafing-dish supper," Peggy returned, feeling that if she were to act as Elaine's instructor she must begin with the fundamentals. "Chafing dishes and the aprons that go with them are all right for fun, but, when it comes to real business, there's nothing like a good range and a big apron. I'll lend you one of mine."

Elaine, enveloped in a long apron which fell to the bottom of her skirt, was soon being initiated into some of the preliminary mysteries of household economy. "There are five of us Raymonds to get supper for," Peggy said counting them off on her fingers. "And Dick's always so hungry that he counts for two. You'll stay, won't you?"

"O, I'd better not. I don't know anybody but you."

"That'll be the best way to get acquainted. And, besides, if you help with the cooking, you ought to help eat the things. That's half the fun. I don't know how anybody can be a good cook who hasn't got a good appetite. I simply adore the things I make."

After a careful examination of the refrigerator the supper was planned. There had been baked fish for dinner, and the remnants, Peggy explained to the respectfully attentive Elaine, arranged in a baking dish, with cream sauce between the layers and crumbs on top, would be even more delicious than the fish in its original state. Peggy also decided on baking powder biscuits. "They're such handy things," she said. "And you can stir them up so quickly and keep on baking as long as anybody is hungry; so they're one of the very first things you should learn to make."

Working with Peggy, Elaine began to understand why she found everything "fun." The neat, pleasant kitchen had a charm of its own. There was an agreeable excitement about the business of evolving a palatable supper from materials which the eye of inexperience had found unpromising. Elaine asked a great many questions, helped a little, in an awkward fashion, which unkind critics would have pronounced a hindrance rather than an aid, and was conscious of a steadily increasing respect for this deft-handed girl who knew so well what she wanted to do and how to do it.

The telephone bell rang while Peggy was sifting out the flour for the biscuits. She dusted her hands, and went to answer it. "Very well, father," Elaine heard her say, and she was smiling when she came running back.

"We're going to have company," she announced to Elaine as if the news were pleasant. "A Mr. White, one of father's friends." She reflected a moment, frowning thoughtfully. "I guess we'll put some potatoes in the oven to bake. There'll be time enough if we pick out small ones, and there's plenty of the fruit cake."

The potatoes were washed hastily and consigned to the oven, and Peggy sifted out a little more flour. Then the door bell rang and there was a sound of voices in the hall. A moment later Peggy's mother slipped into the kitchen and shut the door behind her.

"Peggy, old Mr. and Mrs. Andrews have just come. I suppose they'll stay for supper. Have you got enough for two more?"

"O, yes. We'll have enough," Peggy answered blithely.

"Don't you want me to help you?"

"O, I'm getting on finely with my neighbor's assistance. You can go back and entertain the company." As her mother slipped away, looking relieved, Peggy added to Elaine, "I didn't know what I was getting you into when I asked you over this afternoon."

"Will there really be enough for so many?" demanded Elaine, feeling rather oppressed by the weight of these unusual responsibilities.

"I've had a brilliant idea; I'm going to heat some maple syrup. People like it with hot biscuit, and, besides, it takes off the edge of their appetite," Peggy explained shamelessly. "But we shall have to put an extra leaf in the table, I'm afraid."

At six o'clock everything was ready. A pleasant mixture of odors pervaded the house, the fragrance of coffee being most in evidence. Peggy had just taken a pan of biscuit from the oven, and was calling Elaine's attention to their flaky lightness, when Dick put his head through the door.

"Say, Peg--"

"O, is that you, Dick? This is our new neighbor, Elaine Marshall."

Dick gave a shy little bob of his head in Elaine's direction. "Say, Peg," he repeated.

"Yes, dear."

"Looney Batezell's mother has gone somewhere to supper, and his father, too, and the hired girl won't fuss to fix him anything decent, and so I just told him to come over here to supper."

Elaine waited for the explosion that did not come. "Very well," Peggy said resignedly. As the door closed and Dick's footsteps echoed along the hall, she flung a twinkle in Elaine's direction. "It never rains but it pours," she quoted.

"Why, I don't see--" Elaine checked herself, reflecting that it was not necessary for the matter to be explained to her satisfaction. But Peggy took it on herself to reply to the unspoken remonstrance.

"I suppose I might have told Dick he couldn't have Looney to-night. But it's only one more and it doesn't really make much difference. Besides we like to have Dick feel that his friends are welcome. When you are bringing up a boy," concluded Peggy, laughing, and still very much in earnest, "you have to think of so many things."

Peggy did not eat her supper that evening till the others had finished. She waited on the table, and baked biscuit, and if there was anything more remarkable than the celerity with which the biscuit plates were cleared, it was the promptness with which they were refilled, each time with flaky, smoking-hot biscuits, which fairly melted in one's mouth. Only in one respect had Peggy miscalculated, and that was when she remarked that the maple syrup would take off the edge of her guests' appetites. To all appearances it only whetted them to a more razor-like keenness.

But everybody was satisfied at last, and Peggy ate her own supper, her cheerfulness unimpaired by the fact that the baking dish had been scraped clean before her turn came, and that her baked potato was overdone. She protested against Elaine's determination to stay and help her with the dishes, but Elaine was firm.

"It's only fair, as part payment for my lesson. And, besides, I dare say I need to learn things about washing dishes as well as cooking."

As a matter of fact, Elaine had learned several things that afternoon, and the secret of making baking-powder biscuits was not perhaps the most important. She had seen a girl not far from her own age equal to an emergency which older housekeepers would have found trying, keeping her head clear and temper unruffled. Elaine was beginning to understand that it was not what Peggy did, so much as her way of doing it, that set her apart.

"I feel real selfish keeping you so long," Peggy declared, when the last dish was in its place. "Your poor mother will have been awfully lonely."

"O, no, she--" Elaine paused with an air of checking herself on the verge of an admission. "Mamma doesn't mind being alone," she ended, but Peggy was quite sure that this was not what she had intended to say.

Peggy stood in the doorway while her new friend and pupil crossed the yard, passed through the opening in the hedge and tried her own door. It was locked, and Elaine knocked and waited till her mother came to let her in. As the door opened Elaine turned and waved a good night to the figure framed in light, watching to be sure that she was safely home.

As Peggy returned the greeting, something odd happened. In the room above a shade was lowered. All that Peggy saw was an extended arm and a white hand pulling down the shade, but she stood staring as if this had been a most out-of-the-way proceeding.

"Queer thing," mused Peggy. "Elaine and her mother are downstairs at the door, and they haven't any servant, and I'm sure I thought Mrs. Marshall was alone this evening."

She looked blankly at the non-committal shade, then remembered her morning's lessons, and, closing the door, ran upstairs to her school books. By bed-time she had forgotten to wonder whose hand had lowered the shade in that upstairs room.