"When it's dark you can light all the sconces. I want you to use the pale green, Bohemian dinner set to-night; and I want just as little silver as possible."
Wilkins looked blank, and Hazel laughed. "Oh, we 'll make it up with some cut glass, I 'll manage it. I want the table to look cool and simple, just to-night."
Cool and simple. Wilkins failed to comprehend it, but such was his faith in "little Missy," that he carried out her orders to the letter, and the result was, according to Mrs. Fenlick, "a dream of beauty."
When she had made her preparations to her entire satisfaction, as well as Wilkins's, and the latter had called Minna-Lu from her culinary tug-of-war to witness "little Missy's" triumph, Hazel ran into the library.
Her father looked at her in amazement. Could this radiant, young girl be the same Hazel of a year ago? They had gone directly to North Carolina when Hazel had left Mount Hunger, and had been at home but two days. This little dinner was given to Mr. Clyde's intimate friends as an informal celebration and recognition of his daughter's return to the New York house.
Now, as she ran into the room and linked her arm in his, her father looked down upon her with such evident pride and love, that Hazel laughed joyfully, kid her cheek against his coat-sleeve and patted his hand.
"Do I look nice, Papa Clyde?"
"Nice! that's no word for it, Birdie." And thereupon he took her in his arms and gave her such a hug and a kiss, that the pretty dress must have suffered if it had not been made of the softest of white China-silk.
"Oh, my flowers! you 'll crush them!" she cried, shielding with both hands a bunch of flowers at her belt.
"Where did you get all this--this style, daughter mine? It's--why, you 're nothing but a little girl, but it's 'chic.'"
Hazel enjoyed her father's admiration to the full. She drew herself up, straight and tall, graceful and slender--her head was already above his shoulder--exclaiming:--
"Little girl! Well, your little girl designed this gown herself. I would n't have any fuss or frills about it; it's just plain and full and soft and clingy, and this sash of soft silk--is n't it a pretty, pale green?--feel--" She caught up a handful of the delicate fabric and crushed it in her hand, then smoothed it again, and it showed no wrinkles. "I 've put it on to match the dinner. I 've had it all my own way--Wilkins did just as I said--and it's all cool and green and springy. You 'll see."
"Where did you get these flowers?" Mr. Clyde touched the bunch of arbutus, that showed so delicately pink and white against the white of her dress and the green of her sash.
A wave of beautiful color shot up to the roots of the little crinkles of chestnut hair on her temples; she touched the blossoms caressingly. "I wrote March about this dinner-party, and how it was the first at which I had been hostess, and he wrote back and wanted to know what I was going to wear, and I told him--and this morning these lovely things came by mail all done up in cotton wool in a tin cracker-box, the kind Chi uses to put his worm-bait in, when he goes fishing. Are n't they lovely? And was n't March lovely to think of them, papa?"
"They are n't half as lovely as you are," said Mr. Clyde, earnestly, replying to half of her question only. "You are my unspoiled Hazel-blossom--" Then a sudden, intrusive thought caught and arrested his words. "Hazel Blossom," he repeated to himself, looking at her unconscious face as he uttered the last word, "Good heavens! Could such a thing be?"
"De Cun'le an' Mrs. Fenlick," announced Wilkins.
And when they were all seated at the table--the Colonel and Mrs.
Fenlick, Doctor and Mrs. Heath, Aunt Carrie and Uncle Jo, the Masons and the Pearsells--with no candelabra to interfere with the merry speech and glances, with the light from the candles in the sconces shining softly on the exquisite napery, on the low bed of white tulips in the centre and the grace of the pale, green porcelain, with the tall Bohemian Romer-glasses before the plates--what wonder that Mrs. Fenlick pronounced it a "dream of beauty"?
When their guests had gone, Mr. Clyde turned to Hazel:--"I shall be glad to open the Newport cottage again, Birdie, with such a little hostess to help me entertain."
"The Newport house, papa!" Hazel exclaimed, a distinct note of disappointment sounding in her voice.
"Why not, dear? I thought of getting down there by the tenth; in fact, gave my orders to Mrs. Scott to begin packing to-morrow."
Hazel was evidently struggling with herself. She fingered the arbutus nervously; took them out of her belt; inhaled their fragrance. Then she looked up with a smile, although the corners of her mouth drooped and trembled a little:--
"Why, of course, why not, papa? It's so much pleasanter there in May, than when everybody is down for the summer."
Her father sat down in an easy-chair, put an arm around his daughter, and drew her down to a seat on the arm of the chair.
"Now, Hazel, I want you to tell me all about it. Don't you want to go?"
"Yes, if you 're there, papa, but--" she turned suddenly and her arm stole around his neck--"don't leave me there alone, papa, please don't."
"Leave you--I? Why what do you mean, dear?"
"Oh, it is so lonesome when you are away, papa, when you go off yachting with the Colonel--and the house is so big, and there 's nobody to talk to and say good-night to--and--and, oh, dear!" The tears began to come, but she struggled bravely for a few minutes.
"Why, little girl, you have never told me you were lonesome without me: indeed, you have never shown any sign of it, or of wanting me around much. I never thought--why, Hazel." Down went the curly head on his shoulder, and the sobs grew loud and frequent.
"There, there, Birdie," he said soothingly, stroking her head, "you 're all tired out; this party has been too much for you--"
An energetic, protesting head-shake was followed by broken sentences--"It was n't that--I 'm not tired--you don't know, papa--I didn't know--know I was lonesome, and that I was--I think I was homesick--dreadfully--but Barbara Frietchie, you know--I had to be brave--and, I have tried not to show it to make you feel unhappy--and I love you so! but, oh, dear! I miss them so dreadfully, and I hoped--I was a member of the N.B.--B.O.--O., Oh--dear me,--Society, and the by-law says--I mean March read it--Oh, papa!"
"Well, well, there, there, dear," said the somewhat mystified father, bending all his efforts to soothe this evidently perturbed spirit, "why did n't you tell me before?"
"Because I was Barbara Frietchie."
"Now, Hazel, sit up and look me in the face and tell me what you mean.
I supposed I was holding Hazel Clyde in my arms and not old Barbara Frietchie. Please explain."
"I thought I wrote you, papa," Hazel could not help smiling through her tears, for it did strike her as rather funny about papa's holding the patriotic, old lady in his arms.
"Well, you did n't tell me that." So Hazel explained.
Mr. Clyde nodded approval. "Very good, I approve of the N.B.B.O.O.
Society, and of the present Barbara Frietchie's heroism--but no more of it is called for. You see, I fully intended you should pay your friends--my friends--a visit this summer, but I thought it would be much better later in the season when Mrs. Blossom would be rested from the fatigue of March's illness--"
"Oh, papa!" A squeeze effectually impeded further utterance. "I don't care how soon we go to Newport, or anywhere--of course, if _you_ are with me--as long as I can go to Mount Hunger sometime this summer. And, besides," she added eagerly, "we planned next winter's visit from Rose, didn't we?"
"I should rather think we did. We shall be very proud of our beautiful friend, Rose, and delighted to have our friends meet her, shan't we?"
Another squeeze precluded, for the moment, articulate speech.
"Yes," Hazel cried, enthusiastically, "we 'll take her to concerts and operas--just think, papa, with that lovely voice she has never heard a concert!--and we 'll take her to the theatre and--"
"And," her father went on, growing enthusiastic himself at the prospect, for he was the soul of hospitality, "and we 'll give her a dainty dinner or two, and possibly a little dance--few and early, you know--"
"Oh--ee!" cried Hazel, forgetting her woe, "and Mrs. Heath will give a lunch-party for her, and, perhaps, Aunt Carrie a tea, and Mrs. Fenlick a reception--"
"Heavens!" interrupted her father, "you 'll kill her with kindness--that fresh, wild rose can't stand all that--"
"Oh, yes, she can, papa; she can stand that just as well as I stood going up there where everything was so different."
"True," said Mr. Clyde, thoughtfully, "it was different."
"Oh, it was, papa! I never had to go to bed alone. Mrs. Blossom always came to say good-night and to kiss me, and to--to--"
"To what?" asked her father.
"You won't mind if I tell you?" Hazel asked, half-shyly.
"Mind! I should say not; I should mind if you did n't tell me."