"'I told thee when love was hopeless; (thump) But now he is wild and sings--(thump) That the stars above (thump! thump!!) Shine ever on Love--(thump--)'"
Jack knocked rather loudly, and Rose turned with a little "Oh!" and an attitude that made Jack long for a button-hole kodak.
"Come in, Mr. Sherrill," she said, cordially, but thinking to herself, "Caught again! well, I don't care."
"I hope I have n't come too early this morning to be received," said Jack, extending his hand.
"I can't shake, Mr. Sherrill," laughed Rose, "and if I stop to wash them, you won't have any rolls for tea."
"Do go on then," said Jack, eagerly, "only don't let me be a bother. I was afraid it might be too early and inconvenience you, but--"
"Not a bit," said Rose as she turned to the kneading-board again. "If you don't mind, I 'm sure I don't; only these rolls must be attended to."
"You 're very good to let me stay and watch the process," said Jack, humbly, deferentially taking his stand by the table. "I hope I shall not interfere so much with Mrs. Blossom; I forgot that--that--" Jack grew red and confused.
"That we did our own work?" Rose supplied the rest of his thought with such winning frankness, that Jack succumbed then and there to the delight of a novel experience.
"I 'll be out in a few minutes, Mr. Sherrill," called a cheery voice from the pantry behind him. Jack started,--then laughed.
"Am I interrupting you, too, Mrs. Blossom?" he said, addressing a crack in the pantry door.
"I don't mean to let you, or you will have no sponge cakes for tea; I 'm beating eggs and can't leave them or they 'll go down."
"Can't I help, Mrs. Blossom? I 've no end of unused muscle," said Jack, entering into the fun of the situation.
"No, thank you, I shall be but a few minutes. Rose dear, just feel the oven, will you?"
Jack began to think himself a nonentity in all this domesticity. "'Feel the oven,'" he said to himself. "Do girls do that often, I wonder." He watched Rose's every movement.
"Now, confess, Mr. Sherrill, have you ever seen anyone make biscuit before?" said Rose, cutting off a piece of dough, flouring it, patting it, cuddling it in both hands, folding it over with a little slap to hold a bit of butter, and tucking it into the large, shallow pan.
"No--" Jack drew a long breath, "I never have. You see I have always thought it a kind of drudgery, but this--" Jack sought for a word that should express his feelings in regard to the process as performed by Rose--"this is, why--it's poetry!" he exclaimed with a flashing smile that became his expressive face wonderfully, and caused Rose to fail absolutely in making a shapely poem of the next roll.
She laughed merrily. "There now, they 'll soon be done--in good shape too, if you don't compliment them too much."
"I 'll eat a dozen of them, I warn you now." Jack was waxing dangerous, for he was already possessed with an insane desire to become a piece of dough for the sake of having those pretty hands pat him into shape.
"Do you hear that, Martie?" cried Rose, flushing with pleasure.
"Yes. That's the best compliment you can pay them, Mr. Sherrill. I hope my cakes will fare as well," she said, coming from the pantry with extended hand.
It was strange! But when Jack Sherrill returned the cordial pressure of that same hand, small, shapely, but worn and hardened with toil, his eyes suddenly filled with tears. This, truly, was a home, with what makes the home--a mother in it.
Mrs. Blossom saw the tears, the struggle for composure, and, knowing from Hazel he was motherless, read his thought;--then all her sweet motherhood came to the surface.
"My dear boy," she said with quivering lip, "it is very thoughtful of you to come up and pioneer the way over the Mountain for all your city friends."
Jack found his voice. "Mrs. Fenlick wanted to come, too, Mrs. Blossom, but I managed to put it so she thought it would be better to wait until afternoon. They are all looking forward to it."
"I 'm sorry Hazel is n't here; she is out picking berries with the children. If Rose had n't so much to do, I 'd send her to hunt them up."
Jack protested. He had come to call on Mrs. Blossom and had detained them altogether too long.
"I don't want to go," he said laughingly, "but I know I ought. It seems almost an imposition for so many of us to come up here and put you to all this trouble. Why did you ask us, Miss Blossom?" At which question, Rose did not belie her name, for a sudden wave of color surged into her face, and she looked helplessly and appealingly at her mother.
"I 've put my foot into it now," was Jack's thought, as Mrs. Blossom responded quickly, "For more reasons than one, Mr. Sherrill."
They were out on the porch; Chi was bringing up Little Shaver.
"It will be a regular stampede this afternoon," said Jack, gayly, as he vaulted into the saddle. "Have you room enough for so many horses?" He turned to Chi.
"Plenty 'n' to spare, 'n' I 'm goin' to give 'em a piazzy tea of their own. Little Shaver knows all about it: I 've told him. I never saw but one horse before that could most talk, 'n' that's Fleet."
Little Shaver whinnied, and with a downward thrust and twist of his head tried to get it under Chi's arm.
"Did n't I tell you?" said Chi, delightedly.
"Can I get on to the main road by going over the Mountain?" Jack asked him.
"Yes, you can get over, if you ain't particular how you get," said Chi.
"No road?"
"Kind of a trail;--over the pasture 'n' through the woods, an acre or two of brush, 'n' then some pretty steep slidin' down the other side, 'n' a dozen rods of swimmin', 'n' a tough old clamber up the bank--'n'
there you are on the river road as neat as a pin."
Jack laughed. "Just what Little Shaver glories in; I 'll try it, and much obliged to you, Mr.--" he hesitated.
"Call me, Chi."
"Chi," said Jack, in such a tone of good comradeship that it brought the horny hand up to his in a second's time.
Jack grasped it; "Good-bye till this afternoon." He spoke to Little Shaver, who ducked his head and fairly scuttled across the mowing, scrambled up the pasture, took the three-rail fence at the top in a sort of double bow-knot of a jump, and then disappeared in the woods, leaving the three gazing after him in admiration.
"That feller's got the right ring," said Chi, emphatically; "but if he had n't come up here this mornin', first thing, after that invite of Rose-pose's, I 'd have set him down alongside of that Miss Seaver--'n' a pretty low seat that would be!"
"I 'll put up some lunch, Chi, for you and March, and, if you can find him, you would do well to start now for the trout."
Mrs. Blossom turned to Rose. "Come, dear, we 've a hundred and one things to do to be ready in time. You may set the table on the porch, and we 'll all picnic for dinner to-day; I 've no time to get a regular one, and father is n't at home."
It was a perfect afternoon on that second of September. At a quarter of five Mrs. Blossom and Rose and Hazel were on the porch, looking down upon the lower road for the first glimpse of the party.
The table was set on the huge rough veranda that Mr. Blossom and Chi had built just off the kitchen long-room. Clematis and maiden-hair ferns, which abounded on the Mountain, were the decorations, and set off to good advantage Mrs. Blossom's mother's old-fashioned tea-set of delicate green and white china.
On one end was a large china bowl heaped with blackberries, on the other stood a common glass one filled with luscious, red raspberries. The sponge cakes gleamed, appetizingly golden, from plates covered with grape-vine leaves for doilies.
The chicken quivered in its own jelly on a platter wreathed with clematis. The delicious odor of fried trout floated out from the long-room, and the rolls were steaming hot in snow-white napkins.