Dorothy's House Party

Then said Alfaretta, triumphantly:

“The Party has begun and I’m to it, I’m in it!”

“So am I, so am I! Though I did have to invite myself!” returned Mr. Winters. “Strange that this little girl of mine should have left me out, that morning when she was inviting everybody, wholesale.”

For to remind her that he “hadn’t been invited” was the “trouble” which he had stooped to whisper in Dorothy’s ear, as she left him at the smithy door. So she had run home and with the aid of her friends already there had concocted a big-worded document, in which they begged his presence at Deerhurst for “A Week of Days,” as they named the coming festivities; and also that he would be “Entertainer in Chief.”

“You see,” confided Dolly, “now that the thing is settled and I’ve asked so many I begin to get a little scared. I’ve never been hostess before – not this way; – and sixteen people – I’m afraid I don’t know enough to keep sixteen girls and boys real happy for a whole week. But dear Mr. Winters knows. Why, I believe that darling man could keep a world full happy, if he’d a mind.”

“Are you sorry you started the affair, Dolly Doodles? ’Cause if you are, you might write notes all round and have it given up. You’d better do that than be unhappy. Society folks would, I reckon,” said Molly, in an effort to comfort her friend’s anxiety. “I’m as bad as you are. It begins to seem as if we’d get dreadful tired before the week is out.”

“I’d be ashamed of myself if I did that, Molly, I’ll go through with it even if none of you will help; though I must say I think it’s – it’s sort of mean for you boys, Jim and Monty, to beg off being ‘committees.’”

“The trouble with me, Dolly, is that my ideas have entirely given out. If you hadn’t lost that hundred dollars I could get up a lot of jolly things. But without a cent in either of our pockets – Hmm,” answered Monty, shrugging his shoulders.

Jim said nothing. He was still a shy lad and while he meant to forget his awkwardness and help all he could he shrank from taking a prominent part in the coming affair.

Alfaretta was the only one who wasn’t dismayed, and her fear that the glorious event might be abandoned was ludicrous.

“Pooh, Dorothy Calvert! I wouldn’t be a ’fraid-cat, I wouldn’t! Not if I was a rich girl like you’ve got to be and had this big house to do it in and folks to do the cookin’ and sweepin’, and – and rooms to sleep ’em in and everything!” she argued, breathlessly.

“You funny, dear Alfaretta! It’s not to be given up and I count on you more than anybody else to keep things going! With you and Mr. Seth – if he will – the Party cannot fail!” and Alfy’s honest face was alight again.

It had proved that the “Learned Blacksmith” “would” most gladly. At heart he was as young as any of them all and he had his own reasons for wishing to be at Deerhurst for a time. He had been more concerned than Dorothy perceived over the missing one hundred dollars, and he was anxious about the strange guest who had appeared in the night and who was so utterly unable to give an account of herself.

So he had come, as had they all and now assembled for their first meal together, and Dorothy’s hospitable anxiety had wholly vanished. Of course, all would go well. Of course, they would have a jolly time. The only trouble now, she thought, would be to choose among the many pleasures offering.

There had been a new barn built at Deerhurst that summer, and a large one. This Mr. Winters had decreed should be the scene of their gayest hours with the big rooms of the old mansion for quieter ones; and to the barn they went on that first evening together, as soon as supper was over and the dusk fell.

“Oh! how pretty!” cried Helena Montaigne, as she entered the place with her arm about Molly’s waist, for they two had made instant friends. “I saw nothing so charming while I was abroad!”

“Didn’t you?” asked the other, wondering. “But it is pretty!” In secret she feared that Helena would be a trifle “airish,” and she felt that would be a pity.

“Oh! oh! O-H!” almost screamed Dorothy, who had not been permitted to enter the barn for the last two days while, under the farrier’s direction, the boys had had it in charge. Palms had been brought from the greenhouse and arranged “with their best foot forward” as Jim declared. Evergreens deftly placed made charming little nooks of greenery, where camp-chairs and rustic benches made comfortable resting places. Rafters were hung with strings of corn and gay-hued vegetables, while grape-vines with the fruit upon them covered the stalls and stanchions. Wire strung with Chinese lanterns gave all the light was needed and these were all aglow as the wide doors were thrown open and the merry company filed in.

“My land of love!” cried Alfaretta. “It’s just like a livin’-in-house, ain’t it! There’s even a stove and a chimney! Who ever heard tell of a stove in a barn?”

“You have! And I, too, for the first time,” said Littlejohn Smith at her elbow. “But I ’low it’ll be real handy for the men in the winter time, to warm messes for the cattle and keep themselves from freezin’. Guess I know what it means to do your chores with your hands like chunks of ice! Wish to goodness Pa Smith could see this barn; ’twould make him open his eyes a little!”

“A body could cook on that stove, it’s so nice and flat. Or even pop corn,” returned Alfaretta, practically.

“Bet that’s a notion! Say, Alfy, don’t let on, but I’ll slip home first chance I get and fetch some of that! I’ve got a lot left over from last year, ’t I raised myself. I’ll fetch my popper and if you can get a little butter out the house, some night, we’ll give these folks the treat of their lives. What say?”

Whatever might be the case with others of that famous Party these two old schoolmates were certainly “happy as blackbirds” – the only comparison that the girl found to fully suit their mood.

When the premises had been fully explored and admired, cried Mr. Seth:

“Blind man’s buff! Who betters me?”

“Nobody could – ‘Blind man’s’ it is!” seconded Monty, and gallantly offered: “I’ll blind!”

“Oh! no choosing! Do it the regular way,” said Dolly. “Get in a row, please, all of you, and I’ll begin with Herbert. ‘Intry-mintry-cutry-corn; Apple-seed-and-apple-thorn; Wire-brier-limber-lock; Six-geese-in-a-flock; Sit-and-sing-by-the-spring; O-U-T – OUT!’ Frazer Moore, you’re – IT!”

The bashful lad who was more astonished to find himself where he was than he could well express, and who had really been bullied into accepting Dorothy’s invitation by his chum, Mike Martin, now awkwardly stepped forward from the circle. His face was as red as his hair and he felt as if he were all feet and hands, while it seemed to him that all the eyes in the room were boring into him, so pitilessly they watched him. In reality, if he had looked up, he would have seen that most of the company were only eagerly interested to begin the game, and that the supercilious glances cast his way came from Herbert Montaigne and Mabel Bruce alone.

Another half-moment and awkwardness was forgotten. Dorothy had bandaged the blinder’s eyes with Mr. Seth’s big handkerchief, and in the welcome darkness thus afforded he realized nothing except that invisible hands were touching him, from this side and that, plucking at his jacket, tapping him upon the shoulder, and that he could catch none of them. Finally, a waft of perfume came his way, and the flutter of starched skirts, and with a lunge forward he clasped his arms about the figure of:

“That girl from Baltimore! her turn!” he declared and was for pulling off the handkerchief, but was not allowed.

“Which one? there are two Baltimore girls here, my lad. Which one have you caught?”

Mabel squirmed, and Frazer’s face grew a deeper red. He had been formally introduced, early upon Mabel’s arrival, but had been too confused and self-conscious to understand her name. He was as anxious now to release her as she was to be set free, but his tormentors insisted:

“Her name? her name? Not till you tell her name!”

“I don’t know – I mean – I – ’tain’t our Dolly, it’s t’other one that’s just come and smells like a – a drug store!” he answered, desperately, and loosened his arms.

Mabel was glad enough to escape, blushing furiously at the way he had identified her, yet good-naturedly joining in the laugh of the others. Though she secretly resolved to be more careful in the use of scents of which she was extravagantly fond; and she allowed herself to be blindfolded at once, yet explaining:

“Maybe I shall have to tell who you are by just such ways as he did me. I never was to a House Party before and you’re all strangers, ’cept Dolly C., and anybody’d know her!”

But it wasn’t Dolly she captured. Susceptible Monty beheld in the little Baltimorean a wonderfully attractive vision. She was as short and as plump as he was. Her taste ran riot in colors, as did his own. He was bewildered by the mass of ruffles and frills that one short frock could display and he considered her manner of “doing” her hair as quite “too stylish for words.” It was natural, therefore, that he should deliberately put himself in her way and try his best to be caught, while his observant mates heartlessly laughed at his unsuccessful maneuvers.

But it was handsome Herbert upon whose capture Mabel’s mind was set, and it was a disappointment that, instead of his arm she should clutch that of James Barlow. However, there was no help for it and she was obliged to blindfold in his turn the tall fellow who had to stoop to her shortness, while casting admiring glances upon the other lad.

So the game went on till they were tired, and it was simple Molly Martin who suggested the next amusement.

“My sake! I’m all beat out! I can’t scarcely breathe, I’ve run and laughed so much. I never had so much fun in my life! Let’s all sit down in a row and tell riddles. We’ll get rested that way.”

To some there this seemed a very childish suggestion, but not to wise Seth Winters. The very fact that shy Molly Martin had so far forgotten her own self-consciousness as to offer her bit of entertainment argued well for the success of Dorothy’s House Party with its oddly assorted members. But he surprised Helena’s lifted eyebrows and the glance she exchanged with the other Molly, so hastened to endorse the proposition:

“A happy thought, my lass; and as I’m the oldest ‘child’ here I’ll open the game myself with one of the oldest riddles on record. Did anybody ever happen to hear of the Sphinx?”

“Why, of course! Egypt – ” began Monty eagerly, hoping to shine in the coming contest of wits.

Seth Winters shook his head.

“In one sense a correct answer; but, Jamie lad, out with it! I believe you know which Sphinx I mean. All your delving into books – out with it, man!”

“The monster of the ancients, I guess. That had the head of a woman, the body of a dog, the tail of a serpent, the wings of a bird, the paws of a lion, and a human voice;” answered Jim blushing a little thus to be airing his knowledge before so many.

“The very creature! What connection had this beauty with riddles, if you please?”

They were all listening now, and smiling a little over the old farrier’s whimsical manner, as the boy student went on to explain:

“The Sphinx was sent into Thebes by Juno for her private revenge. The fable is that he laid all that country waste by proposing riddles and killing all who could not guess them. The calamity was so great that Creon promised his crown to anyone who could guess one, and the guessing would mean the death of the Sphinx.”

“Why do you stop just there, Jim, in the most interesting part? Please go on and finish – if you can!” cried Dorothy.