Chapter 7 HILARY'S TURN

Pauline and Hilary were up in their own room, the "new room," as it had come to be called, deep in the discussion of certain samples that had come in that morning's mail.

Uncle Paul's second check was due before long now, and then there were to be new summer dresses, or rather the goods for them, one apiece all around.

"Because, of course," Pauline said, turning the pretty scraps over, "Mother Shaw's got to have one, too. We'll have to get it-on the side-or she'll declare she doesn't need it, and she does."

"Just the goods won't come to so very much," Hilary said.

"No, indeed, and mother and I can make them."

"We certainly got a lot out of that other check, or rather, you and mother did," Hilary went on. "And it isn't all gone?"

"Pretty nearly, except the little we decided to lay by each month. But we did stretch it out in a good many directions. I don't suppose any of the other twenty-fives will seem quite so big."

"But there won't be such big things to get with them," Hilary said, "except these muslins."

"It's unspeakably delightful to have money for the little unnecessary things, isn't it?" Pauline rejoiced.

That first check had really gone a long ways. After buying the matting and paper, there had been quite a fair sum left; enough to pay for two magazine subscriptions, one a review that Mr. Shaw had long wanted to take, another, one of the best of the current monthlies; and to lay in quite a store of new ribbons and pretty turnovers, and several yards of silkaline to make cushion covers for the side porch, for Pauline, taking hint from Hilary's out-door parlor at the farm, had been quick to make the most of their own deep, vine-shaded side porch at the parsonage.

The front piazza belonged in a measure to the general public, there were too many people coming and going to make it private enough for a family gathering place. But the side porch was different, broad and square, only two or three steps from the ground; it was their favorite gathering place all through the long, hot summers.

With a strip of carpet for the floor, a small table resurrected from the garret, a bench and three wicker rockers, freshly painted green, and Hilary's hammock, rich in pillows, Pauline felt that their porch was one to be proud of. To Patience had been entrusted the care of keeping the old blue and white Canton bowl filled with fresh flowers, and there were generally books and papers on the table. And they might have done it all before, Pauline thought now, if they had stopped to think.

"Have you decided?" Hilary asked her, glancing at the sober face bent over the samples.

"I believe I'd forgotten all about them; I think I'll choose this-"

Pauline held up a sample of blue and white striped dimity.

"That is pretty."

"You can have it, if you like."

"Oh, no, I'll have the pink."

"And the lavender dot, for Mother Shaw?"

"Yes," Hilary agreed.

"Patience had better have straight white, it'll be in the wash so often."

"Why not let her choose for herself, Paul?" Hilary suggested.

"Hilary! Oh, Hilary Shaw!" Patience called excitedly, at that moment from downstairs.

"Up here!" Hilary called back, and Patience came hurrying up, stumbling more than once in her eagerness. The next moment, she pushed wide the door of the "new room." "See what's come! It's addressed to you, Hilary-it came by express-Jed brought it up from the depot!" Jed was the village expressman.

She deposited her burden on the table beside Hilary. It was a good-sized, square box, and with all that delightful air of mystery about it that such packages usually have.

"What do you suppose it is, Paul?" Hilary cried. "Why, I've never had anything come unexpectedly, like this, before."

"A whole lot of things are happening to us that never've happened before," Patience said. "See, it's from Uncle Paul!" she pointed to the address at the upper left-hand corner of the package. "Oh, Hilary, let me open it, please, I'll go get the tack hammer."

"Tell mother to come," Hilary said.

"Maybe it's books, Paul!" she added, as Patience scampered off.

Pauline lifted the box. "It doesn't seem quite heavy enough for books."

"But what else could it be?"

Pauline laughed. "It isn't another Bedelia, at all events. It could be almost anything. Hilary, I believe Uncle Paul is really glad I wrote to him."

"Well, I'm not exactly sorry," Hilary declared.

"Mother can't come yet," Patience explained, reappearing. "She says not to wait. It's that tiresome Mrs. Dane; she just seems to know when we don't want her, and then to come-only, I suppose if she waited 'til we did want to see her, she'd never get here."

"Mother didn't say that. Impatience, and you'd better not let her hear you saying it," Pauline warned.

But Patience was busy with the tack hammer. "You can take the inside covers off," she said to Hilary.

"Thanks, awfully," Hilary murmured.

"It'll be my turn next, won't it?" Patience dropped the tack hammer, and wrenched off the cover of the box-"Go ahead, Hilary! Oh, how slow you are!"

For Hilary was going about her share of the unpacking in the most leisurely way. "I want to guess first," she said. "Such a lot of wrappings! It must be something breakable."

"A picture, maybe," Pauline suggested. Patience dropped cross-legged on the floor. "Then I don't think Uncle Paul's such a very sensible sort of person," she said.

"No, not pictures!" Hilary lifted something from within the box, "but something to get pictures with. See, Paul!"

"A camera! Oh, Hilary!"

"And not a little tiny one." Patience leaned over to examine the box. "It's a three and a quarter by four and a quarter. We can have fun now, can't we?" Patience believed firmly in the cooperative principle.

"Tom'll show you how to use it," Pauline said. "He fixed up a dark room last fall, you know, for himself."

"And here are all the doings." Patience came to investigate the further contents of the express package. "Films and those funny little pans for developing in, and all."

Inside the camera was a message to the effect that Mr. Shaw hoped his niece would be pleased with his present and that it would add to the summer's pleasures,

"He's getting real uncley, isn't he?" Patience observed. Then she caught sight of the samples Pauline had let fall. "Oh, how pretty! Are they for dresses for us?"

"They'd make pretty scant ones, I'd say," Pauline, answered.

"Silly!" Patience spread the bright scraps out on her blue checked gingham apron. "I just bet you've been choosing! Why didn't you call me?"

"To help us choose?" Pauline asked, with a laugh.

But at the present moment, her small sister was quite impervious to sarcasm. "I think I'll have this," she pointed to a white ground, closely sprinkled with vivid green dots.

"Carrots and greens!" Pauline declared, glancing at her sister's red curls. "You'd look like an animated boiled dinner! If you please, who said anything about your choosing?"

"You look ever so nice in all white, Patty," Hilary said hastily.

"Have you and Paul chosen all white?"

"N-no."

"Then I shan't!" She looked up quickly, her blue eyes very persuasive.

"I don't very often have a brand new, just-out-of-the-store dress, do

I?"

Pauline laughed. "Only don't let it be the green then. Good, here's mother, at last!"

"Mummy, is blue or green better?" Patience demanded.

Mrs. Shaw examined and duly admired the camera, and decided in favor of a blue dot; then she said, "Mrs. Boyd is down-stairs, Hilary."

"How nice!" Hilary jumped up. "I want to see her most particularly."

"Bless me, child!" Mrs. Boyd exclaimed, as Hilary came into the sitting-room, "how you are getting on! Why, you don't look like the same girl of three weeks back."

Hilary sat down beside her on the sofa. "I've got a most tremendous favor to ask, Mrs. Boyd."

"I'm glad to hear that! I hear you young folks are having fine times lately. Shirley was telling me about the club the other night."

"It's about the club-and it's in two parts; first, won't you and Mr.

Boyd be honorary members?-That means you can come to the good times if

you like, you know.-And the other is-you see, it's my turn next-"

And when Pauline came down, she found the two deep in consultation.

The next afternoon, Patience carried out her long-intended plan of calling at the manor. Mrs. Shaw was from home for the day, Pauline and Hilary were out in the trap with Tom and Josie and the camera. "So there's really no one to ask permission of, Towser," Patience explained, as they started off down the back lane. "Father's got the study door closed, of course that means he mustn't be disturbed for anything unless it's absolutely necessary."

Towser wagged comprehendingly. He was quite ready for a ramble this bright afternoon, especially a ramble 'cross lots.

Shirley and her father were not at home, neither-which was even more disappointing-were any of the dogs; so, after a short chat with Betsy Todd, considerably curtailed by that body's too frankly expressed wonder that Patience should've been allowed to come unattended by any of her elders, she and Towser wandered home again.

In the lane, they met Sextoness Jane, sitting on the roadside, under a shady tree. She and Patience exchanged views on parish matters, discussed the new club, and had an all-round good gossip.

"My sakes!" Jane said, her faded eyes bright with interest, "it must seem like Christmas all the time up to your house." She looked past Patience to the old church beyond, around which her life had centered itself for so many years. "There weren't ever such doings at the parsonage-nor anywhere else, what I knowed of-when I was a girl. Why, that Bedelia horse! Seems like she give an air to the whole place-so pretty and high-stepping-it's most's good's a circus-not that I've ever been to a circus, but I've hear tell on them-just to see her go prancing by."

"I think," Patience said that evening, as they were all sitting on the porch in the twilight, "I think that Jane would like awfully to belong to our club."

"Have you started a club, too?" Pauline teased.

Patience tossed her red head. "'The S. W. F. Club,' I mean; and you know it, Paul Shaw. When I get to be fifteen, I shan't act half so silly as some folks."

"What ever put that idea in your head?" Hilary asked. It was one of Hilary's chief missions in life to act as intermediary between her younger and older sister.

"Oh, I just gathered it, from what she said. Towser and I met her this afternoon, on our way home from the manor."

"From where, Patience?" her mother asked quickly, with that faculty for taking hold of the wrong end of a remark, that Patience had had occasion to deplore more than once.

And in the diversion this caused, Sextoness Jane was forgotten.

"Here comes Mr. Boyd, Hilary!" Pauline called from the foot of the stairs.

Hilary finished tying the knot of cherry ribbon at her throat, then snatching up her big sun-hat from the bed, she ran down-stairs.

Before the side door, stood the big wagon, in which Mr. Boyd had driven over from the farm, its bottom well filled with fresh straw. For Hilary's outing was to be a cherry picnic at The Maples, with supper under the trees, and a drive home later by moonlight.

Shirley had brought over the badges a day or two before; the blue ribbon, with its gilt lettering, gave an added touch to the girls' white dresses and cherry ribbons.

Mr. Dayre had been duly made an honorary member. He and Shirley were to meet the rest of the party at the farm. As for Patience H. M., as Tom called her, she had been walking very softly the past few days. There had been no long rambles without permission, no making calls on her own account. There had been a private interview between herself and Mr. Boyd, whom she had met, not altogether by chance, down street the day before.

The result was that, at the present moment, Patience-white-frocked, blue-badged, cherry-ribboned-was sitting demurely in one corner of the big wagon.

Mr. Boyd chuckled as he glanced down at her; a body'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to get ahead of that youngster. Though not in white, nor wearing cherry ribbons, Mr. Boyd sported his badge with much complacency. Winton was looking up, decidedly. 'Twasn't such a slow old place, after all.

"All ready?" he asked, as Pauline slipped a couple of big pasteboard boxes under the wagon seat, and threw in some shawls for the coming home.

"All ready. Good-by, Mother Shaw. Remember, you and father have got to come with us one of these days. I guess if Mr. Boyd can take a holiday you can."

"Good-by," Hilary called, and Patience waved joyously. "This'll make two times," she comforted herself, "and two times ought to be enough to establish what father calls 'a precedent.'"

They stopped at the four other houses in turn; then Mr. Boyd touched his horses up lightly, rattling them along at a good rate out on to the road leading to the lake and so to The Maples.

There was plenty of fun and laughter by the way. They had gone picnicking together so many summers, this same crowd, had had so many good times together. "And yet it seems different, this year, doesn't it?" Bell said. "We really aren't doing new things-exactly, still they seem so."

Tracy touched his badge. "These are the 'Blue Ribbon Brand,' best goods in the market."

"Come to think of it, there aren't so very many new things one can do,"

Tom remarked.

"Not in Winton, at any rate," Bob added.

"If anyone dares say anything derogatory to Winton, on this, or any other, outing of the 'S. W. F. Club,' he, or she, will get into trouble," Josie said sternly.

Mrs. Boyd was waiting for them on the steps, Shirley close by, while a glimpse of a white umbrella seen through the trees told that Mr. Dayre was not far off.

"It's the best cherry season in years," Mrs. Boyd declared, as the young folks came laughing and crowding about her. She was a prime favorite with them all. "My, how nice you look! Those badges are mighty pretty."

"Where's yours?" Pauline demanded.

"It's in my top drawer, dear. Looks like I'm too old to go wearing such things, though 'twas ever so good in you to send me one."

"Hilary," Pauline turned to her sister, "I'm sure Mrs. Boyd'll let you go to her top drawer. Not a stroke of business does this club do, until this particular member has her badge on."

"Now," Tom asked, when that little matter had been attended to, "what's the order of the day?"

"I hope you've worn old dresses?" Mrs. Boyd said.

"I haven't, ma'am," Tracy announced.

"Order!" Bob called.

"Eat all you like-so long's you don't get sick-and each pick a nice basket to take home," Mrs. Boyd explained. There were no cherries anywhere else quite so big and fine, as those at The Maples.

"You to command, we to obey!" Tracy declared.

"Boys to pick, girls to pick up," Tom ordered, as they scattered about among the big, bountifully laden trees.

"For cherry time,

Is merry time,"

Shirley improvised, catching the cluster of great red and white cherries Jack tossed down to her.

Even more than the rest of the young folks, Shirley was getting the good of this happy, out-door summer, with its quiet pleasures and restful sense of home life. She had never known anything before like it. It was very different, certainly, from the studio life in New York, different from the sketching rambles she had taken other summers with her father. They were delightful, too, and it was pleasant to think of going back to them again-some day; but just at present, it was good to be a girl among other girls, interested in all the simple, homely things each day brought up.

And her father was content, too, else how could she have been so? It was doing him no end of good. Painting a little, sketching a little, reading and idling a good deal, and through it all, immensely amused at the enthusiasm with which his daughter threw herself into the village life. "I shall begin to think soon, that you were born and raised in Winton," he had said to her that very morning, as she came in fresh from a conference with Betsy Todd. Betsy might be spending her summer in a rather out-of-the-way spot, and her rheumatism might prevent her from getting into town-as she expressed it-but very little went on that Betsy did not hear of, and she was not one to keep her news to herself.

"So shall I," Shirley had laughed back. She wondered now, if Pauline or Hilary would enjoy a studio winter, as much as she was reveling in her Winton summer? She decided that probably they would.

Cherry time was merry time that afternoon. Of course. Bob fell out of one of the trees, but Bob was so used to tumbling, and the others were so used to having him tumble, that no one paid much attention to it; and equally, of course, Patience tore her dress and had to be taken in hand by Mrs. Boyd.

"Every rose must have its thorns, you know, kid," Tracy told her, as she was borne away for this enforced retirement. "We'll leave a few cherries, 'gainst you get back."

Patience elevated her small freckled nose, she was an adept at it. "I reckon they will be mighty few-if you have anything to do with it."

"You're having a fine time, aren't you, Senior?" Shirley asked, as Mr. Dayre came scrambling down from his tree; he had been routed from his sketching and pressed into service by his indefatigable daughter.

"Scrumptious! Shirley, you've got a fine color-only it's laid on in spots."

"You're spattery, too," she retorted. "I must go help lay out the supper now."

"Will anyone want supper, after so many cherries?" Mr. Dayre asked.

"Will they?" Pauline laughed. "Well, you just wait and see."

Some of the boys brought the table from the house, stretching it out to its uttermost length. The girls laid the cloth, Mrs. Boyd provided, and unpacked the boxes stacked on the porch. From the kitchen came an appetizing odor of hot coffee. Hilary and Bell went off after flowers for the center of the table.

"We'll put one at each place, suggestive of the person-like a place card," Hilary proposed.

"Here's a daisy for Mrs. Boyd," Bell laughed.

"Let's give that to Mr. Boyd and cut her one of these old-fashioned spice pinks," Hilary said.

"Better put a bit of pepper-grass for the Imp," Tracy suggested, as the girls went from place to place up and down the long table.

"Paul's to have a pansy," Hilary insisted. She remembered how, if it hadn't been for Pauline's "thought" that wet May afternoon, everything would still be as dull and dreary as it was then.

At her own place she found a spray of belated wild roses, Tom had laid there, the pink of their petals not more delicate than the soft color coming and going in the girl's face.

"We've brought for-get-me-not for you, Shirley," Bell said, "so that you won't forget us when you get back to the city."

"As if I were likely to!" Shirley exclaimed.

"Sound the call to supper, sonny!" Tom told Bob, and Bob, raising the farm dinner-horn, sounded it with a will, making the girls cover their ears with their hands and bringing the boys up with a rush.

"It's a beautiful picnic, isn't it?" Patience said, reappearing in time to slip into place with the rest.

"And after supper, I will read you the club song," Tracy announced.

"Are we to have a club song?" Edna asked.

"We are."

"Read it now, son-while we eat," Tom suggested.

Tracy rose promptly-"Mind you save me a few scraps then. First, it isn't original-"

"All the better," Jack commented.

"Hush up, and listen-

"'A cheerful world?-It surely is.

And if you understand your biz

You'll taboo the worry worm,

And cultivate the happy germ.

"'It's a habit to be happy,

Just as much as to be scrappy.

So put the frown away awhile,

And try a little sunny smile.'"

There was a generous round of applause. Tracy tossed the scrap of paper across the table to Bell. "Put it to music, before the next round-up, if you please."

Bell nodded. "I'll do my best."

"We've got a club song and a club badge, and we ought to have a club motto," Josie said.

"It's right to your hand, in your song," her brother answered. "'It's a habit to be happy.'"

"Good!" Pauline seconded him, and the motto was at once adopted.