The Bean Supper

The three Steppe children stood in the centre aisle of the local department store, in a state of unembarrassed good humour, while Peggy and Elizabeth drew apart in consultation. The saleswoman busied herself with folding up a series of small garments that had been discussed and rejected by the two young shoppers.

"Six dollars and thirty-three cents, and a stamp." Elizabeth counted the contents of her purse again, distractedly. "Your three dollars and my three, and the thirty-three cents we both saved on ice-cream cones, and the stamp makes it thirty-five. I had no idea that children's clothes were so expensive. We can hardly buy shoes for them."

"Well, they can't go to that supper unless they have shoes. Look at their feet, Elizabeth—I mean Elspeth——"

"I know it," Elizabeth said, colloquially.

"I want to go to bean supper," Madget wailed. "I said I would go."

"Hush up, Baby," Mabel warned her, "you're in a apartment store. The lady will throw you right out the door if you don't be good and quiet."

Madget turned large, disturbed eyes on the lady indicated, and discovered in her calm countenance nothing to rouse alarm.

"I want to go to bean supper!" she wailed, even louder than before.

"We have some laced canvas shoes with rubber bottoms that are a dollar and a dollar and a half," the clerk volunteered. "You might get them for the little girls, and a pair of sneakers for the boy. We have them in black and brown," she added, with a hasty glance toward the grimy toes and scratched ankles protruding from his nondescript footwear. "We have stockings and socks that are reasonable, too."

"Well, let's get their feet covered," Peggy said, "and trust to luck for the rest."

Madget and Mabel were accordingly fitted to brown shoes and socks and Moses to black sneakers and long, black ribbed stockings. Nothing that could be said to him, even the argument of the financial inconvenience of covering his long legs, would induce him to put on socks like those of his sisters. It was stockings or nothing with Moses, though he was perfectly willing to do without them entirely.

"One dollar and eight cents. Could we buy this little boy any kind of trousers or bloomers for that, do you suppose? You wouldn't mind taking a stamp to make up the difference, would you?" Peggy asked, anxiously.

"Not in the least. We have some khaki bloomers that might fit him for seventy-five cents."

"I ain't agoing to wear bloomers," Moses said, decisively. "I want pants or nothing."

"Nothing is what you've got on now," Peggy said, severely, "or very near nothing. You can't go to that bean supper in rags, you know. Don't you want to have some cake and ice-cream, and corned beef——"

"And potato salud," Mabel put in, helpfully, "and beans——"

"And ice-cream and cake and potato salud," Madget droned, "and coffee and ice-cream and cake——"

"You said that before," Moses said. "Don't you ever get tired of hearing things over and over?"

"We can get a Butterick pattern and make him a shirt," Peggy suggested.

"We can get Grandmother to give us some cambric and things to make the little girls dresses. See here, Moses, you've just got to have a pair of those bloomers. All boys wear them. You can't go to the supper if you don't—— Do you mind measuring him?"

Moses stood up and was measured; and five dollars went into the cash drawer of the Hamlin Department Store, while the two girls, laden with their purchases, steered their young charges toward home.

Grandmother produced goods enough to make Moses a blouse of brown striped shirting and each of the little girls a print dress. She also found some old petticoats, yellowed with age, but daintily made, and some waists with which they could be worn, complete to the very last button.

"So far, so good," Peggy said, "but we've got to hustle to get this family covered before five o'clock to-morrow night. Moses' shirt is going to be the worst. The dresses we can mostly make on the sewing machine. You play around here in the yard all day to-morrow, children, so we can try on the things whenever we need you."

They started with their dressmaking bright and early the next morning.

Moses' shirt went very well, for after it was cut and basted, Grandmother offered to do all the necessary finishing, but Madget's dress kept both the girls busy almost all the rest of the day. It was a very effective garment, despite the fact that the seams were not finished. The hem was done beautifully by hand, the little sleeves were lace trimmed, and the pink chambray of which the dress was made hung in graceful folds about the small figure. Madget's toilet was very successful, but as for Mabel, ill luck seemed to blight her costume from the very start. One side of the dress was cut shorter than the other, both sleeves turned out to be for one arm, and there was no more material to cut another, and to add dismay to discomfiture, Elizabeth spilt a whole bottle of ink over the front breadth just as she was getting it ready for the machine.

"I don't know what we are going to do," Peggy cried. "It's nearly four o'clock. We've just about got time to wash and dress them and get them started."

Grandmother appeared at this juncture with a little white, frilly garment in her hands.

"Here's an apron that would just about fit the oldest girl," she said. "I know it ain't the style to wear aprons, and this would cover all her new dress up, but I found it, and I just thought I'd show it to you."

Elizabeth looked at it speculatively.

"She could wear that for a dress," she cried. "We could just sew in lace at the armholes, and nobody would ever know."

"Have I got to be washed?" Moses demanded. "I can wash myself, and I will, too. Kin I borry an old tablecloth or something?"

"Here's a towel," Peggy said.

"I want an old tablecloth, too."

"You come downstairs and I'll give you one. Children takes notions," Grandmother said. "He probably has an idea of some kind. You come along with me, Moses."

Thus relieved of Moses, Peggy and Elizabeth each took a little girl and scrubbed and polished and combed till the result was miraculous. With the wonderful, red curls smoothed and a big yellow bow on top of them, Mabel looked like the distinctive child she was meant to be. The apron proved a great success.

"She looks just as well as Madget, in spite of all our trouble," Elizabeth said a little dolefully. "There's nothing to cry about in that, Madget. You want your sister to look as well as you do, don't you, dear?"

"No, I don't," Madget answered, concisely.

"She's awfully cunning, if she is bad," Peggy said, standing off to view the effect of her finishing touches. "She looks good enough to eat."

"Ice-cream and potato salud, and beans and coffee an' ice-cream," Madget began, at the suggestion.

"I said you looked good enough to eat, Madget."

"I am going to eat."

"Where do you suppose Moses is? It's time he was dressing."

"No, he went downstairs with Grandma. There he comes now, I think."

Trailing up the front stairs into the guest chamber, which was the centre of activities, Moses appeared, swaddled in the folds of a red damask tablecloth, holding his clothes in his hand. His hair was dripping, but from the rest of his person there emanated an atmosphere, even an odour, of shining cleanliness.

"Want to know how I washed?" he inquired, proudly. "I went out by the back door, and I took off all my clothes, and then I rubbed myself all over with yaller soap, and then I turned the hose on till I come nice and clean. I don't like to take no baths in the house. You can't get the water to squizzling."

"Well, I guess it squizzled, all right," Peggy said. "Now get yourself into these clothes quickly."

It was two thoroughly exhausted girls that finally marshalled their charges into the Town Hall, where the bean supper was to take place, but they felt that their efforts to improve the Steppe children were justified by the result. Moses in a brown shirt, bloomers and stockings to match them, with his not unshapely feet encased in black sneakers, and a red Windsor tie—he had demanded red—headed the little procession. Then Mabel, proudly pinned into her white apron, with a yellow sash about her middle, and the lace frills of her improvised sleeves draped elegantly about her elbows, and lastly the resplendent Madget—a complete product in pink chambray and ribbons to match.

"Their colours all swear at each other," Elizabeth said, "I never thought of that, did you, Peggy? We'll put Moses between. His tie doesn't go with pink or yellow, but there isn't very much of it, thank goodness!"

"Where are the beans?" Mabel asked, practically, as they seated her at one end of a long, deal table decorated with bunches of small American flags—the occasion was patriotic—clustered in cups and glasses, like stiff-stemmed flowers, and vases of dahlias and asters and rambler roses flanking them.

"Don't show your ign'rance," Moses said, witheringly. "It's a bean supper. You don't have no more beans than you do supper. See the chocolate cake, Madget, and the custid pie, and the potato salud?"

"What's that yellar stuff, with leaves growing out of it?" Mabel inquired.

"That's potato salud. Ain't you never seen potato salud before? Where you been all your life?"

"To home," Mabel answered, literally.

Madget, elevated on a wooden box with Peggy's coat thrown over it, sat speechless between her brother and Elizabeth. The hall began to fill rapidly. A young girl mounted the platform and started a few uncertain notes on the wheezy organ.

"That's going to be the 'Star-Spangled Banner,' Peggy groaned. "We've got to get these children up again." But one of the bustling waitresses hurried to the side of the young organist, and arrested her in mid-career.

"Don't play that," she was heard protesting. "We want to feed this lot, and get them out in time to set the tables twice. We haven't got time for them to stand up through the anthem."

The young musician switched obediently to "I am always blowing bubbles—blowing bubbles in the air," which Moses sang with her nonchalantly.

Plates of cold ham and corned beef began to circulate up and down the table. The portly waitresses, family matrons in white duck and muslin, enveloped in huge white aprons with long strings tied imposingly behind, began to pass the beans, and to distribute thick mugs of golden-brown coffee.

Madget still gazed ahead, with unseeing eyes and quivering lips.

"You eat your supper," Moses said, not unkindly, "or brother'll land you one when he gets you home. Ain't you thankful for all that Miss Laury Ann and Elizabeth and Peggy Farraday has done for you? See me eat."

"See me," Mabel contributed, encouragingly, but Madget's miserable silence was unbroken.

"Let's not pay any attention to her," Peggy whispered. "She's got stage fright. I don't believe she's ever been in a crowd before."

"And such a crowd," Elizabeth groaned. "Where did they all come from?"

"Oh, from all around. These suppers are awfully popular, because you are allowed to eat all you can for thirty-five cents. All these women that have to do their own cooking all the time are so glad to have a meal that somebody else gets ready. Lots of poor old hermits that live alone like to come and stuff themselves in a civilized manner once in a while."

"Civilized!" Elizabeth cried, looking down at the three-pronged fork with which she had been vainly trying to spear her beans. "Sheets for tablecloths, and paper napkins, and these implements of torture."

"Civilization, as my history teacher loves to remark, is all a matter of comparison. Don't eat with your knife, Moses, dear. Nice little boys don't eat with their knives."

Moses looked around inquiringly.

"I ain't got no spoon," he said.

"Why don't you try a fork?"

"I ain't never et with a fork," he said. "Forks is for women."

"He's about right," Peggy said. "Look down the table, Elizabeth—Elspeth, I mean."

A long line of men and boys, with only an occasional woman sandwiched in between, faced them. They were all eating steadily and industriously with their knives. At intervals they would stretch a far-reaching hand for more supplies, or nudge a neighbour, and indicate with a grunt a plate of food that was out of their reach. Peggy began to choke with suppressed merriment.

"Look, look, there comes old Samuel Swift," she said. "Would you think they would let him in? Oh, isn't he an outrageous old creature? Who is he, anyway, Elspeth? Do you know? Where did he come from?"

"He's a sort of—of relation of mine," Elizabeth said, bravely.

"Cousin Samuel," Peggy cried. "Do you think we ought to invite him to come and sit beside us? Oh, dear, I wish you'd pinch me. I'm afraid I'll have hysterics if I don't stop seeing the funny side of everything."

"I'm having—having trouble on my own account," giggled Elizabeth.

"Where's Madget?" Peggy gasped.

Madget's empty seat confronted them accusingly.

"She got bashful, and went under the table," Mabel said. "She has those bashful spells. I give her a piece of bread and butter."

Madget, secure from embarrassment in this seclusion, ate everything that her thoughtful brother and sister provided her with, impartially. Her pink chambray suffered from contact with the dusty floor and the butter and chocolate icing.

"What's the odds, so long as she's happy?" Peggy cried. "That's better than having her cry into her plate. See Moses. Isn't he wonderful? I don't suppose he ever really got enough to eat before in his life."

"I suppose he is wonderful," Elizabeth said, "but I wish he'd keep his bloomers up, or else not get up from the table when he passes food down to Madget. You'd think he'd feel them slipping, wouldn't you?"

"It would be all right if he had something on under them," Peggy said.

"I didn't think of that, did you?"

"I've busted in my back," Mabel informed them, cheerfully, "I guess I've et so much."

"I wish we'd sewed her in, instead of pinning her in," Elizabeth said, "but never mind. I'll take my school pin. She's lost one of the blue enamel baby pins."

"I've got a pin down my back," Mabel said, wriggling. "Shall I git it for you?"

"No, no, not here, dear."

"I'd just as soon."

"Well, we wouldn't just as soon have you. After the ice-cream comes, we'll go."

But when this condition had been fulfilled, Madget presented an unexpected obstacle to their departure. She had her ice-cream in her hiding place, and spilled a great deal of it down the front of her dress. By some unique manipulation of her spoon she had managed to smear her hair with it also. It was not because of these casualties that she refused to make a second public appearance, however. She merely preferred not to see the light of day again, having successfully sought sanctuary from an intimidating multitude. Finally, Elizabeth picked her up, and bore her kicking and screaming from the hall, Woodrow Wilson, under the protection of his flag, looking down at her with some criticism implied in his glance, and the unfriendly crowd of Madget's imagination seemed to be boring a hole in her back with its composite gaze.

"It was a relief to get Moses out without his trousers falling off," Peggy declared. "Mabel's apron was entirely undone, and her hair came down."

"Think how well their shoes and stockings looked," Elizabeth said, philosophically. "I'm glad we gave them a treat, but I think I should have lived ten years longer if the bean supper hadn't occurred. Madget's got an awfully shrill voice."

"I can hear her yet," Peggy laughed, "'I won't come out. I won't go home. I won't stay here. I won't be good.' Honestly, Elspeth, it was screamingly funny if we wanted to look at it that way."

"But we didn't do it to be funny," Elizabeth wailed. "We did it to be kind. Did you ever stop to think, Peggy, how different things are in real life from the way they are in books? In a book it would have come out that the children's clothes were a great success, and the children had a lovely time, and the two young heroines were greatly admired for their philanthropy. Or if it had been a funny book, the children would have said funny things that you could have enjoyed. In real life, you just get tired and hot, and things seem flat and stupid."

They were walking home as they talked, with the three children solemnly herded in front of them. The arch of maple trees that shaded the main street of the town swayed softly in the breeze. The birds were still busy calling to each other.

"I don't know that life is so much different from books," Peggy said. "It sometimes seems to me much more beautiful. You can't see the colour of the trees in a book. Walking down Main Street doesn't mean a thing if you read about it, but when you are doing it, you can smell the flowers and hear the birds sing and see the trees waving in the breeze."

Elizabeth quoted. "They do look a little like a great harp, don't they?"

"I can't say that they do," Peggy returned, candidly, "but they sound like one. You know a lot of poetry, don't you, Elizabeth?"

"I'd like to know a lot of poetry. My friend Jean Forsyth knows almost all the poetry that was ever written. She is really literary, you know. I think she'll be a great poetess when she grows up."

"I'd like to meet her some time," Peggy said. "Oh, listen to Moses." She beckoned Elizabeth nearer the children, who were engaged in animated discussion of the afternoon's festivities.

"I could go back there and eat a whole pot o' beans and a plate o' corn beef, and a freezer of ice-cream, and a six-quart measure of coffee."

"Well, why don't you go back then?" the practical Mabel inquired, "it was paid for you to eat all you wanted to."

"I did eat all I wanted to. I was only saying how much more I could eat if I wanted to."

"I did eat a freezer of ice-cream, didn't I, Mabel?" Madget insisted.

"You didn't have no freezer of ice-cream to eat."

"I did so. A big bear crawled under the table, and gave it to me."

Mabel lifted a sisterly hand to chastise her for the sin of prevarication, but Elizabeth arrested the blow.

"Madget knows she didn't see a big bear. She is only having her little joke."

"A dancing bear, with a great big little monkey on its back," Madget offered in corroboration.

"I don't like jokes," Mabel said. "I ain't agoing to have her make 'em. I'd rather talk about what I had to eat, and I can't if Moses and the baby won't give me any chance to."

"I'll tell you what you do," Peggy said, "you run home and tell your marmer and your parper all about it. The one that gets there first can talk the most, you know. Now we'll go and tell Grandmummy," she added, as the children took to their heels.

"I wonder what she'll say," Elizabeth mused. "She always says something that you don't quite expect, but that somehow settles things."

What she did say, after listening to the complete recital of the affair with an almost suspiciously long face, was merely:

"There's a great satisfaction in undertaking a thing and going straight through to the end, no matter how it comes out. What's worth doing is worth doing well, and I was real proud of the way you two girls stuck it out."

"Well, that's something," Peggy said to Elizabeth, "but deep down in the bottom of her soul, she's laughing at us, just the same."

"She's laughing at us—some," Elizabeth acknowledged.