A SHORTCAKE PARLEY

He smiled a broad welcome at Miss Polly’s guests, as he set down the tray from his head, and uncovered the contents, his brown face fairly glistening with importance.

“Whipped cream in de blue jug, Mis’ Polly, and—and sho’tcake in de deep dish, and gran’maw says you’re to eat it while it’s hot.”

“We will, Stoney,” promised Polly. “Now, girls, gaze on this.”

Back went the snowy linen towel, and there lay disclosed to view one of Aunty Welcome’s famous three-layer shortcakes, all ready for the “fillin’s,” as Stoney would say. It was hot and crisp from the oven. The girls spread the layers with the berries and piled them up.

“I just love this kind of shortcake,” said Ted, as she poured cream from the blue jug over the cake. “Sometimes it’s only plain layer cake with some whole berries laid on the frosting.”

“I knew you’d like it.” Polly leaned her arms on the table with a happy disregard of formalities. As Aunty Welcome had expressed it once, “Dar’s a little laxity permissible in yo’ own backyard, honey chile.” Polly went on. “I wish Crullers were here, too. What new scrape do you suppose she has managed to tumble into?”

“The last one isn’t cold yet,” laughed Ted. “She was sorry for a stray cat, and smuggled it up to the dormitory, and hid it in the closet there. Then Annie May, the cook, gave her some milk for it, and she took that up when she went to bed. But the closet had a spring lock, and Crullers couldn’t open it. Tableau at ten o’clock. Miss Calvert roused: appears in nightgown and kimono, hair in crimpers, dangling a bunch of keys like Fatima. When closet is opened, poor kitty is scared out of its wits, makes a flying leap past the girls, out the nearest window, and disappears. Annie May says she doesn’t believe it was a cat at all. She says it must have been something with an unquiet spirit.”

“Probably poor Crullers had the unquiet spirit when she saw it dash out,” Sue said. “But it really was funny, Polly. The dormitory girls told us about it. Crullers had the milk under her bed, and all at once the cat started to yowl awfully. Then Miss Murray heard it.”

“Her room’s right over the dormitory in that wing,” Ted put in, eagerly.

“Too bad,” Polly said, judicially, “but it’s Crullers all over. What did Miss Calvert do?”

“Paroled her on good behavior for a week, to report nightly to Miss Murray.”

“And she’s probably forgotten all about her parole, and broken it. I’ll find out when I take up the offering of shortcake to-night. Only I wish it were one of the regular teachers, because I don’t know Miss Murray very well.”

“Don’t you like our Bonnie Jean, Polly?” inquired Ted, happily. “She hasn’t distinction, of course—”

“Distinction! Ted Moore,” cried Sue, indignantly. “She hasn’t as much distinction as Buttercup, the Hall tabby. I don’t know why it is, but she never seems friendly to us girls. She’s so abrupt.”

Here the girls broke in with laughter at Sue, for surely if anyone at the Hall could be dubbed abrupt, it was Sue herself, who always thought out loud, and never knew by any chance what she was going to say next.

“Well, I don’t care if you do laugh at me,” Sue declared. “It’s true. She comes from the far West, and I don’t see how she ever got into Calvert Hall as teacher.”

“I’ll ask her to-night, Sue,” promised Polly, gayly.

“But, really and truly, Polly, how did she? Isn’t she unresponsive and ordinary looking? I’ve tried to talk to her ever so many times, and all she says is, ‘Perhaps,’ or ‘I should judge so.’ I don’t think she has any imagination at all.”

Sue pronounced sentence in a very grieved tone of voice, but the girls only laughed at her.

“Miss Murray is in earnest, though,” Ruth said, finally. “She has always seemed strange to us girls, but maybe we’ve seemed so to her. She surely is in earnest, girls, and Miss Calvert says that’s the very first quality a teacher needs. Maybe if we knew her better, we’d like her.”

“Eat your shortcake, children, and stop criticizing your elders,” Polly ordered. “This meeting is not called to discuss Miss Murray or Crullers either. This is the first call for action on the part of the vacation club.”

“Isn’t it pretty early even to think of vacation, Polly?” asked Isabel, with a sigh. “It’s weeks and weeks ahead of us.”

“Don’t groan, good pilgrim, over the hills ahead. They lead to glory,” chanted Polly. “Indeed, it isn’t too early; not if we expect to accomplish anything worth while. Haven’t we planned for it ever since last December, when we gave the first outing bazaar? How much did we glean that time, Ruth?”

“Thirty-four dollars and seventy-two cents,” replied the treasurer, proudly.

“Do you know, Polly,” interrupted Sue, “I think that was a dandy idea; to take the spoils of one vacation, and make them help out on the coming one. We sold off all the frames of seaweed Isabel made, at twenty-five cents each, remember, and the shell curtains went at five dollars each. That’s what swelled the fund.”

“They were not too high,” Isabel said, with a sigh of recollection. “It took pecks and pecks of those pink shells to make the curtains. Kate and I worked on them for two months at odd times.”

“And the tableaux helped out besides. Wasn’t Crullers funny?”

“Forget the past,” Polly ordered. “The future is bobbing right up under our noses, and says ‘attend to me.’ We gave four entertainments—”

“I don’t think they were entertainments, Polly, do you? I think they were fantastic gatherings,” interposed Isabel in her precise way. “The Friendship Fair, where we sold everything that friends could possibly think of—”

“You’re exaggerating, Isabel,” Ruth put in, stolidly. “We just sold airy trifles that people buy to show other people they are remembering them.”

“Same thing,” pronounced Polly. “Have some more shortcake, children, and don’t waste time arguing.”

“The long and the short of it all is this,” said Ruth, who was treasurer of the outing club, and could therefore speak with authority. “Out of the monthly entertainments, fairs, and other things that we have given through the winter, we have cleared about $124.00. Of course Kate Julian helped out too, before she went home, and all the mothers helped, and Polly’s grandfather, but I think we’ve done mighty well.”

“It won’t fill the toe of the stocking when it comes to paying for a real vacation for us girls, Ruth,” Polly returned. “It’s April now, and we must make up our minds where we wish to go, and then work for it with all our might.”

“Now then, how’s the board of lady managers to-day?” demanded a deep voice outside the arbor, and the gray head of the Admiral looked in at them smilingly.