The Turner Twins

“You’re real quick at figures, aren’t you? Seems as if, though, counting on three hundred, you’d be a little short. I’ll have Aunt Persis make one of her marble-cakes. That’ll help out, I guess.”

“Yes’m; thanks awfully,” answered Ned.

“Who is going to serve the refreshments?”

“Why – why – ” Ned’s face fell. “I guess we hadn’t thought of that!”

“Well, it makes a heap of difference, because you can make a quart of ice-cream serve ten people or twenty, just as you’ve a mind to. I usually count on sixteen. Same way with a loaf of cake, and same way with salad. It’s awfully easy to waste salad when you’re serving it. Now, if you’d like me to, Ned, I’ll attend to serving everything for you. You just have the things set down there and I’ll look after them.”

“Oh, Miss Hillman, if you would! Gee, that would be great! It – it’ll be a lot of trouble, though, ma’am.”

“Well, I guess it won’t be the first trouble I’ve seen,” replied Miss Tabitha, dryly; “nor it won’t be the last!”

Thursday afternoon Laurie hurried over to the Coventry place as soon as a two-o’clock recitation was done. Bob was awaiting him at the gate, and conducted him around to the back of the big square house. Ned stared in surprise. The tangle of trees and vines and shrubbery had been trimmed to orderly neatness, the long, unkempt grass had been shorn to a yellow, but respectable, turf, and the old arbor showed new strips where Thomas, the Starlings’ man, had been at work on the decrepit frame. Near at hand lay piles of cedar and hemlock branches.

“Dad got a couple of the men to cut those down near the tunnel and haul them up here.” Bob explained. “Thomas is going to help us put them up. He made a peachy job of the garden, didn’t he?”

“You bet!” responded Laurie, heartily. “I wouldn’t have known the place! I say, Bob, this arbor’s longer than I thought it was.”

“Forty feet, about. Why?”

“I only ordered six tables and a dozen chairs from the caterer,” answered Laurie, dubiously. “Guess they aren’t enough; but he’s charging twenty-five cents apiece for them – ”

“Twenty-five cents for a table? Isn’t that dirt-cheap?”

“We’re only renting them, you idiot!”

“Oh, I see. Well, six is enough, I guess; you don’t want to crowd them. Now let’s get busy with the green stuff. I’ll yell down cellar for Thomas. There’s a ball of twine, and I’ve got two hammers and a lot of tacks on the side porch. You take your coat off and I’ll – ”

“We’ll have to have a step-ladder, Bob!”

“There’s a short ladder right beside you. Be right back.”

Laurie sat down on a wheelbarrow, after removing his coat and folding back the sleeves of his shirt, and looked around him. The garden was fairly large – larger in appearance since the clutter of shrubbery along the sides had been cleared away. Along the School Park edge ran a tall hedge of lilac bushes. At the back was the high board fence, painted dark brown, that separated the garden from the Widow Deane’s humble property. On the other side was a rusty ornamental iron fence, mostly hidden by vines. Broad walks, in spite of Thomas’s efforts rather overrun with weeds, surrounded the central plot of ancient turf, and another ran straight down the middle of the garden, connecting with the arbor. Wires were to be strung from the trees and across to the arbor, and Chinese lanterns hung thereon. Laurie, half closing his eyes, sought to visualize the place as it would appear on Saturday. He did want the affair to be a success, both financial and artistic, both on account of the school and – well, for the honor of the Turners! While he was musing, two things happened simultaneously: Bob and Thomas appeared from the house, and a familiar voice came to him from the opposite direction.

“Nod!” called the voice. “Nod, will you please come here a moment?”

Laurie’s eyes sought the board fence. Over the top of it appeared the head and shoulders of Polly. He left the wheelbarrow and hurried through the arbor and down the walk beyond. Polly’s face indicated distress, whether mental or physical Laurie couldn’t determine. But Polly’s first words explained.

“I can’t stay here l-long,” she said. “I – I’m just hanging by my elbows. I cl-climbed up on a board, and it’s fallen down!”

“I’ll get you a ladder!” cried Laurie, gallantly.

“N-no, never mind. I’m going to drop in a s-second. I just want to ask you what Brown’s color is. Nettie Blanchard is going to be Brown and – ”

“Why, brown, of course!”

“Oh!” There was the sound of desperate scraping against the farther side of the fence, and Polly’s countenance became fairly convulsed with the effort of holding herself in sight. “Oh! She said it was pur-pur – ”

Polly disappeared. There was a thud from the next yard.

“Purple!” The word floated across to him, muffled but triumphant.

“Are you hurt, Polly?” he called anxiously.

“Not a bit,” was the rueful response, “but I’m afraid the day-lilies are!” Then she laughed merrily. “Thanks, Nod! I didn’t think Nettie was right. She loves purple, you see!”

“Does she? Well, say, maybe she can be Williams. We weren’t going to have Williams, but its color is purple, I think, and if she is going to be disappointed – ”

“She will look very well indeed in brown,” came from the other side in judicial tones; “and if we begin making changes, half the girls will want to be something they aren’t. Why, Pearl Fayles begged to be some girls’ college neither Mae nor I had ever heard of, just so she could wear lavender and pale lemon!”

“Well, all right,” laughed Laurie. “She’d better stick to Brown – and brown! Good-by, Polly. I’ll drop in after a while and find out how things are getting on.”

He turned to find Bob viewing him quizzically from the end of the arbor, swinging a hammer in each hand. “Of course it’s all right, I dare say,” he announced, “but I thought you came here to fix up the arbor. Instead of that I find you talking to girls over the fence!”

“There’s only one girl,” replied Laurie, with dignity, “and we were talking business.”

“Oh, of course! Sorry I interrupted.”

“You needn’t be, and you didn’t. Quit grinning like a simpleton and give me a hammer!”

“Right-o! Come on, Thomas! It’s quite all right now!”

An hour later their task was done, and well done, and they viewed it with approval. To be honest, the major part of the work had been performed by the faithful Thomas, although it is not to be denied that both Laurie and Bob toiled conscientiously. Before they were through approving the result from various angles, Bob’s father joined them. Mr. Starling was an older edition of Bob – a tall, straight, lean-visaged man of forty-two or – three, with the complexion of one who had lived an outdoor life. He had a deep, pleasant voice and a quiet manner not fully in accord with a pair of keen eyes and a firm mouth.

“I’d call that a good piece of work, boys,” he said, as he joined them. “And right up to specifications, too. Those paper lanterns come yet, Bob?”

“No, sir; I haven’t seen them.”

“Lanterns, Mr. Starling?” asked Laurie. “Do you mean Chinese lanterns? We’ve ordered a lot from the caterer, sir.”

“Tell him you won’t need them, then. I’ve got a hundred coming up from the city, Turner. They ought to be here, too. Thomas, call up the express company and ask about them.”

“That’s very kind, sir,” said Laurie, “but you needn’t have done it. You – you’re doing everything!”

“Nonsense! Bob and I want to do our part, of course. Well, this wilderness certainly looks different, doesn’t it? That reminds me, Bob; the agent writes me that we may ‘make such improvements to the property as we desire.’ So, as I consider the absence of that arbor an improvement, I guess you can pull it down any time you like. I’m going to have a cup of tea, Turner. Will you join me? I believe there will be cakes, too.”

Laurie found Ned in rather a low frame of mind when he got back to Number 16 a half-hour before supper-time. Ned was hunched over a Latin book and each hand held a firm grip on his hair. At Laurie’s arrival he merely grunted.

“Where does it pain you most?” asked Laurie, solicitously, subsiding into a chair with a weary sigh. Ned’s mood was far from flippant. He rewarded the other with a scowl, and bent his gaze on the book again. “Want to hear the latest news from the front?” persisted Laurie.

“No, I don’t!” his brother growled. “I’ve had all the news I can stand. Smug says that if I don’t get this rotten stuff by nine to-night, and make a perfect showing to-morrow, he will can me!”

“Mr. Cornish said that?” gasped Laurie. “What do you know about that? Why, I thought he was a gentleman!”

“He’s a – a brute! I can’t learn the old stuff! And I have a hunch that Mulford means to give me a try in the Loring game Saturday. And if I don’t get this, Cornish will fix it so I can’t play. He as good as said so.”

“Didn’t you tell him you’d been busy with the fête and everything?”