CHAPTER II.
ALL-HALLOWE’EN.
“Where are those children?” Mrs. Holmes was saying when, in answer to a ring at the door, Prue announced two ladies to see “Mr. and Mrs. Holmes and the young ladies.”
On going to the drawing-room the host and hostess were greeted by a tall, spare person in deep mourning, who remarked, in sepulchral tones, “We have come to see you on a matter of great importance.” There was a little sound from the second visitor. Was it a laugh or a cough? This shorter individual wore a long cloak, while a black veil was tied closely over the face.
While Mr. Holmes was bowing politely and Mrs. Holmes was waiting expectantly for further remark, suddenly every light went out, and when the gas was relighted not a sign of the guests could be seen, but a chorus of unearthly groans and shrieks proceeded from no one knew where, to the terror of Mellicent, who cried, “Oh, mamma, what is it?”
Again the gas went out, and the groans and wails seemed directly in their ears. Then in the darkness three white figures glimmered ghostly, but a second relighting showed no one there.
“This is really uncanny!” ejaculated Lisa.
“My dear,” said grandma, who was smoothing Mellicent’s golden head and calming the little girl’s fears, “don’t you know it is only those witchy children?”
“I’ll warrant Persis is at the bottom of it,” cried Lisa. “She was so down on the boys coming, and here she is the very first one to get them into mischief.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said a voice, plaintively. “You’re always blaming me for everything.” And Lisa turned, astonished to see Persis curled up in an arm-chair by the bay-window, as if she had been taking a nap there.
“Why, where did you come from?” And Lisa gave utterance to her question in tones of astonishment. “I know you haven’t been there all this time.”
“How do you know? Can you take your oath on it?”
“I don’t take oaths; but I haven’t the least recollection of seeing you since dinner, when you were playing with the boys in the hall.”
“Well, your memory is not to be relied upon,” observed Persis, jauntily. “If I should tell you how long I have been here you wouldn’t believe it.”
“I am going to light the lamp,” Lisa remarked. “I don’t want any more Stygian darkness. Why, where is it? I thought it was on the table. Prue must have forgotten to bring it back when she took it out to fill it.” But, as she was in the act of leaving the room, again all was dark.
“I’ll catch those tricksters,” said Mr. Holmes. “This is getting too much of a joke,” and he secreted himself behind the door as the three white-sheeted forms appeared. The first two were too quick for him, but the last one was grabbed, and as Lisa brought in the lighted lamp Basil was discovered.
The poor boy was covered with confusion at being found the culprit, and Persis came to the rescue by saying, “Papa, it was not his fault; we coaxed him into it, Porter and I, and it was I who blew down the gas-pipes to put the lights out. It is All-Hallowe’en, you know.”
A grim smile passed over Mr. Holmes’s face. “Then I suppose you expect me to let you off,” he replied.
“Oh, yes, papa, please. It is the boys’ first evening here, and I don’t want them to think just yet that you are an ogre.”
This was too much for Mr. Holmes, and he laughed. “How much did that remark imply, I wonder, you sauce-box?” he said.
“Why? Oh, why, papa?” And Persis covered her face with both hands. “I believe I did insinuate that you were really ogrish at all times, and you aren’t a bit ever. He isn’t, boys; he is usually a dear; but once in a while, when we are very bad, he can be terrible. I warn you that when papa is seriously offended he is not savage exactly, but so ’way, ’way up—so stately and solemn—that he can scare you out of your wits.”
“Thank you for the reputation,” returned Mr. Holmes. “I am glad you are ready to back me up in maintaining proper discipline. Now, no more tricks to-night.”
“Not even apple-bobbing or meal balls?” said Mellicent, dolefully.
“Meal balls are silly,” sniffed Persis. “Who wants to waste time on stupid names rolled up in a ball of chicken food? I’d rather run around the block with my mouth full of water.”
“What’s that for?” queried Porter.
“Oh, you hear your future husband’s name called, they say. I like the fun of it. It is so hard to run and keep the water in your mouth at the same time. Then salt-cake is fun, too, only I always laugh and nearly always say something when I oughtn’t to speak.”
“I think apple-bobbing will do for to-night,” said Mrs. Holmes. “You can go in the kitchen if you like.”
“Oh! And mayn’t we make some taffy, too, mamma?” pleaded Mellicent. “Grandma will help us; won’t you grandma?”
“To be sure,” was the ready response.
And so it was settled, while the tricksters congratulated themselves that they were let off so easily and that such a pleasant prospect was theirs.
Grandmamma Estabrook was a famous maker of taffy. “She always knows just when it is done,” Persis informed Porter. “And it never gets burnt, and never is the least bit too soft. I am always in such a hurry that I am very apt to take it up before it is done, and it gets, oh, so sticky. This will be fine, I know. We will bob for apples while it is boiling.”
So, although Prue at first looked askance at seeing her kitchen invaded, she was soon ready to lend her services to the furnishing of amusement for “Holly Eve,” and brought in a big tub, which the children filled half-full of water, and the merry game began. After much sputtering and splashing, Porter managed to grasp an apple with his teeth, and Mellicent followed suit.
“They are the slipperiest things I ever saw,” declared Basil, lifting a dripping face from the tub. “Just as I think I have one sure over it rolls and I am cheated. I think I’ll be more of a success at taffy-pulling. My, that looks good!” for Mrs. Estabrook was pouring the seething mass into pans, and the children carried them to the summer-kitchen to cool.
While the others were laughing and talking over their sticks of taffy, Basil was turning over in his mind the advisability of trying to win Mrs. Estabrook’s approval of bicycle riding for girls. This amusement was at that time in the early stage of its popularity, and was looked upon with discredit by many persons. Basil’s attentive, thoughtful ways evidently produced a good impression upon grandma, and she talked cheerily to him of his coming work, of his life at home, and such topics as she thought might interest him.
“I hope you are not going to be homesick,” she said.
“I don’t believe we shall be,” answered Basil, cordially. “You’re all so awfully jolly,—I mean so nice and homelike,—and you know Port and I never had sisters, so we’ll learn a lot about girls, I expect.”
Grandma smiled at the naïve speech. “Have you no girl cousins?” she asked.
“Yes, we have one who lives near us. She’s awfully nice, too; and when we go out on our bikes very often she goes along.”
“Oh, she rides a bicycle!” And Basil saw disapproval of this “nice” cousin written on Mrs. Estabrook’s face.
“She’s such a real good girl. She’s the rector’s daughter, you know,” he hastened to say.
“What! Dr. Allison’s daughter? He is your rector, I have heard your mother say.”
“So he is, and he’s one of the finest fellows you ever saw.”
“Yes, that is what I have always been told,” assented Mrs. Estabrook, “and therefore I can hardly reconcile my idea of his good judgment to the fact of his daughter’s riding a bicycle.”
“Why, don’t you think it’s good for girls? I wish you could see the difference it has made in Mabel Allison. She used to be so delicate. She had dyspepsia and all sorts of things, and now she looks like another girl. Say, Mrs. Estabrook, don’t you think it would be nice for Persis?”
“I don’t think Persis needs it.”
“But it would be fun for her. You would not mind our teaching her, would you? It wouldn’t do any harm for her to know how.”
“No, I suppose not. I know she is very anxious to learn; but I should dislike very much to see her in public mounted on a wheel.”
“Oh, well, we won’t let any one see her. We’ll go into the side street, and you can watch us from your window.”
Mrs. Estabrook did not reply, and Basil, taking silence for consent, went over to Persis and told her with great satisfaction that she was to learn to ride as soon as the boys’ wheels should come.
The part of the city where the Holmes family lived was quite suburban, although only fifteen minutes’ ride by trolley to the heart of the city and within a short distance of the university where Mr. Holmes held a professorship. Theirs was a corner house, and the quiet street which ran along the side of the garden was at times in the day almost deserted, and it was here that the boys intended to initiate Persis into the mysteries of bicycle riding.
A more excited girl than Persis was over the prospect could scarcely be found. “When once grandma sees how I can ride she’ll not say a word against it,” she confided to Lisa. “Then you’ll learn, and we’ll all go out together. Won’t it be fine? I’m so glad Basil and Porter have come.”
“You sang another song this morning,” returned Lisa.
This was after the taffy had been pulled till it was a delicate straw-color, and the young people, having eaten all they could manage, had said their good-nights with much complacency, feeling that the evening had furnished them with all the amusement they could have expected.
“Grandma, you’re a dear, sweet darling. I love you to pieces,” Persis said. “I’m so happy to think you don’t mind my learning to ride.”
“Who said I didn’t mind?”
“Why, Basil. Didn’t you mean it?” And for a moment Persis’s hopes fell. Grandma was too tender-hearted to declare she had never said anything of the kind, and so she only kissed the eager face and said, “Well, my child, I am old-fashioned, I suppose, but you will not go off the side street, will you? I can’t quite stand the thought of seeing you in a more public place.” And Persis’s hopes rose again.
“I think it has been a perfectly lovely Hallowe’en,” she avowed to Lisa, as she vigorously brushed her hair.
“Yes, it has been great fun for you. After all your talk about those boys coming, I notice you are the first one to be hand and glove with them. That’s just like you, always at one extreme or the other,” Lisa retorted. She could not entirely forgive Persis for having been the first to win the boys’ good graces.
“Well, I’d like to know if you didn’t have the same chance for a good time that I did. You should have made the most of your opportunities. That’s just like you, Lisa. You’re always complaining that I have good times, when you have exactly the same chances that I have. The only difference is, that I go and meet the chances, and you sit and wait for them to come to you, because you’re so terribly afraid that somehow you’ll be called upon to step down from your pedestal. If you didn’t cling so close to that pedestal of yours you’d have a better time. I don’t sit still all the time looking for homage. I’d have a pretty stupid time if I did.”
“And precious little you’d get if you looked for it,” asserted Lisa, now more ruffled than before. “I am the eldest, and of course certain things are due me.”
“Oh, dear!” thought Persis. “I wish Lisa were not so terribly tenacious of her prerogatives. They are always getting in my way, and I get snubbed because I don’t regard them. I wonder if I would be so top-lofty and sniffy if I were the eldest. Maybe I would be.” And she suppressed a smile as Lisa threw her a haughty glance from under half-closed lids,—a glance which was meant to convey a sense of superiority.
“Lisa, you would surely have been a Pharisee if you had lived in Bible times,” remarked the irrepressible Persis.
“Then I suppose you would have been a publican and sinner. You don’t have to go back to those times to be the latter.”
Persis laughed, but she was inwardly annoyed, and, jumping up, she opened the door which led into Mellicent’s little room, leaving her elder sister alone.
“Mell, I’m going to sleep with you,” she announced. “Lisa is on her high horse to-night, and there’s not room for her to canter around while I am there.”
Mellicent sleepily moved over to give Persis room. She was used to these little disturbances between her two sisters; and, although it was always Persis who left Lisa in possession, it was sometimes one and sometimes the other who received Mellicent’s sympathies. She was easily influenced, and any little appeal to her vanity, or a properly phrased remark as to the state of her health, generally won her favor. Therefore when Persis said, “I hope that taffy didn’t give you a headache,” she replied, “I had one this morning; but I’m quite used to them, you know.” This with a martyr-like air.
“So it’s a question of headache with or without taffy, isn’t it?” returned Persis, comfortably. “I’ll take mine with this time. Did you know, Mell, that I am going to ride a wheel? And if ever I get one of my own you shall share it with me for letting me share your bed, and Miss Lisa can whistle for a ride.”
“Audrey is going to get a wheel,” Mellicent informed her sister.
“Is she? Then of course you’ll want to ride with her. Well, I’ll teach you, and you shall use mine—when I get it. Oh, don’t you hope we can have one?”
“I didn’t care till Audrey made up her mind about it,” returned Mellicent.
“What a loyal little subject you are! What makes you like Audrey so much?”
“Why, Persis, she is so lovely, and you know she thinks she is descended from the same family of Vanes as that to which Sir Harry Vane belonged. Don’t you know, that dear Sir Harry whose statue we saw in the Boston Public Library last summer? It is so dreadful to think of his having been beheaded.”
“Yes, so it is, but I don’t see that it adds anything special to Audrey’s attractions. I think I must hunt up a headless ancestor. I wonder if we haven’t one hanging somewhere on our family tree.”
“Oh, Persis! how could he hang on a tree without a head?”
“Sure enough, he couldn’t, could he? He’d have to perch there with his head under his arm like—who was it?—oh, yes, St. Denis, who carried his head in his hands after he was beheaded. I don’t believe I’d care, myself, for an ancestor who had to hang. I’ll tell you, Mell, who I think is a nice girl.”
“Who?”
“Annis Brown.”
“What! that quiet little thing? She hasn’t a bit of style; she’s as plain as a pipe-stem.”
“I know it, but I like her.”
“Audrey says she is a parvenu.”
“Humph! Just because her mother keeps boarders. That sounds like Audrey.”
“Now, Persis, I won’t have you run down Audrey.”
“I won’t, then. I’m not going to get into any more squabbles to-night. Audrey is an awfully nice girl, only she does brag a little too much.”
“She has something to brag about.”
“Well, I’m going to find out if some other people haven’t just as much. Never mind, Mell, Audrey’s all right, and so are you. Here we are talking ourselves wide-awake, and it will be morning before we’re ready for it. Let’s turn over and go to sleep,” which they proceeded to do.