  On the day of the party Geraldine was up early and at once donned a pretty blue bungalow apron. Then followed merry hours, each one filled with preparations for the dinner. Alfred offered to help stone dates and crack walnuts, while Danny O’Neil was sent on frequent trips to the village. At five o’clock, with the help of both boys, the dining-room was prettily decorated; then Geraldine went to put on the dress she had made. Later, with Alfred, she stood near the fireplace waiting the coming of the guests. They arrived in a procession of sleighs with ringing of bells and tooting of horns. When Geraldine threw open the door, planning to say “Happy Birthday, Doris!” she was met by a laughing throng of young people, but Doris was not among them. “Why, where is our guest of honor?” the amazed hostess exclaimed as the others trooped into the brightly-illuminated hall. Merry it was who replied: “Doris told me to tell you that she had company arrive unexpectedly. It was so late that there wasn’t time to telephone and ask permission to bring her friend. She knew you would say yes, but she feared it would inconvenience you.” The gladness left Geraldine’s face. “But, Merry,” she protested, “we can’t have Doris’ birthday party without Doris here. It would be like giving the play ‘Hamlet’ and leaving Hamlet out.” Then turning to Alfred she said, “Brother, please drive down and bring back both Doris and her guest.” Just then Danny O’Neil appeared, and, after having greeted the newcomers, she said: “Miss Geraldine, there’s a beggar at the back door and she insists that she must see you at once.” A month previous Geraldine would have tossed her head and replied haughtily that a beggar woman most certainly could have nothing to say to her that she would care to hear. Perhaps even then she might have replied impatiently had she not chanced to see Jack Lee intently watching her. Turning to Merry, she asked her to escort the girls upstairs to remove their wraps (Alfred was leading the boys to his den), then she hurried into the kitchen wondering why a beggar should ask to see her. In the dimly-lighted back entry stood a frail woman, shabbily dressed, who was leaning on a cane. A black bonnet shaded her face, and Geraldine believed that she had never before seen this beggar person. The stranger began to speak in a weak, wavering voice. “Miss Geraldine,” she said, “I am a poor widow with one child and seven husbands. Oh, no, I mean one husband and seven children. My husband is sick, my young ones are starving. I heard as how you were going to have a fine party tonight and I came to beg you to save a few crumbs for my poor babies.” Geraldine was puzzled. The woman before her was shabby enough to be a beggar, but her plea did not ring true. “If you will come into the kitchen,” the girl replied, “I will pack a basket for you to take to your seven husbands and one child.” There was a shout of laughter from the door leading into the dining-room, and Geraldine, turning, beheld the boys and girls peering over each other’s shoulders watching the fun. “I just knew it was a prank,” Geraldine laughingly exclaimed. Then to the beggar woman she said, “You’re Doris, of course.” “No, she isn’t,” a merry voice called from the doorway, and there, among the others, stood the missing Doris. The supposed beggar suddenly removed her bonnet and the laughing face of Geraldine’s dearest friend from the city was revealed. With a cry of joy, the delighted hostess embraced the beggar, rags and all. “Adelaine Drexel,” she exclaimed, “this is the most wonderful surprise. Why didn’t you write me that you were coming? Or, Doris, why didn’t you tell me?” Then turning to the smiling housekeeper, the girl exclaimed: “Mrs. Gray, this is my dear little playmate. We have lived next door to each other ever since our doll days. You’ve heard me speak of Adelaine Drexel just steens of times.” Then slipping her arm about the laughing beggar girl, she led the way up to her room. Ten minutes later they reappeared. Adelaine had shed her shabby costume and looked like a rose fairy in a pretty pink gown. When the young people were seated around the blazing log in the library, the stately Colonel Wainright appeared and was gladly greeted by all. Then Mrs. Gray called: “Come, children; supper is ready.” Geraldine laughed. “I just can’t impress Mrs. Gray with my age and dignity. She always will call me ‘little girl.’” “I think she is the dearest old lady,” Adelaine Drexel declared. “She’s just my ideal of a grandmother. I am so glad that she is here with you.” Geraldine’s own ideas about how one should feel toward an “upper servant” had undergone such a complete change that she now replied with enthusiasm: “I do love Mrs. Gray. She is very superior to her position. She is the Colonel’s housekeeper, you know.” In the brightly lighted dining-room the young people were standing while the little old lady designated their places. Geraldine noticed that she was giving up her own seat at one end of the table for the unexpected guest. “Oh, Mrs. Gray,” she intervened. “You have forgotten our plan. You are to sit there. I won’t need a chair just at first, for I am going to serve.” “And I am going to help,” Jack Lee declared. Then, taking the self-appointed waitress by the hand, he led her kitchenward. “That was great of you, Geraldine,” he said when they were alone. “Lots of girls would have let the old lady wait on them. Now give me a towel to throw over my arm, and a white apron so that I will look like a regular garcon.” This added to the fun, and for the first time in her sixteen years Geraldine found herself actually serving others in what she would have scornfully called, two months before, a manner degrading and menial. Now and then Bob Angel sprang up to lend a hand, and when Jack and Bob tried to be comedians there was always much laughter and playful bantering. The whipped-cream cake was praised until the cheeks of the maker thereof glowed with pleasure. Then, when the others had been served, they moved closer and made room for Geraldine and Jack. When they were leaving the table, Doris said softly to the Irish lad: “Danny, I want to see you alone as soon as possible.” When the young people were in the library playing old-fashioned games, with dear Mrs. Gray and the Colonel joining in now and then, Doris and Danny slipped away unobserved. They sat on a window seat in the hall and the girl turned such glowing eyes toward the boy that a load of dread was lifted from his heart. “Good angel,” he said, “after all it isn’t anything about the highway robbery that you have to tell. I can see that by your face. I was so afraid that——” The girl placed a finger on his lips. “Danny O’Neil,” she said seriously, “I want you to promise me that you will never again refer to that mistake in your life. I myself would completely forget it if you did not speak of it so often. I want you to forget it, too. We must not let the mistakes of our past hold us down. It is what we are, and what we are going to be that count, not what we have been. Now, remember, sir,” Doris shook a finger at him, “your ‘good angel’ will be good to you no longer if you ever mention that subject again.” The lad looked at the pretty girl at his side and said earnestly: “Doris, I can’t understand why you are so kind to me, a no-account Irish boy who isn’t anybody and never will be anybody.” Doris laughed. “Danny, would you mind if we changed the subject? I wish to do the talking, so you be as quiet as a little brown mouse while I tell you my glorious plan, but first of all I want to thank you for the beautiful bookrack that you carved for me. It’s hanging on the wall of my room this very minute and my prettiest books are in it.” Then, laying her hand on the boy’s arm, she added: “Danny, please don’t call yourself good-for-nothing. It is not right for us to speak that way of the gifts that God has given us. Mother thinks that the carving of the bookrack shows that you have unusual talent and that the wild rose design is very pretty.” The boy’s face glowed with pleasure. “Oh, Doris,” he said eagerly, “do you really think that maybe, sometime, I could make good with my designing? You don’t know what it would mean to me if I could.” “It would mean a whole lot to me, too, Danny,” the girl said, rising. “Now we must go back to join the others, but there, I have forgotten the very thing that I wanted to ask you, which is this: Are you willing that I send the bookrack to a friend of Mother’s who is an artist? He would be able to tell just which course of training you ought to have.” “Good angel, would you do it for me?” the boy asked eagerly. “Then I wouldn’t have to be just groping in the dark. I’d know better how to plan my life.” These two joined the others, who had not missed them. Merry was talking to Geraldine and Doris joined them. “Why didn’t Myra Comely come to your dinner party?” the president of the “S. S. C.” was asking their hostess. “You invited her that night at our house.” Geraldine nodded. “And, more than that, I dropped her a card telling her the date and that I would send my brother after her, but she ’phoned early this morning that her mother had caught a severe cold that might develop into pneumonia and she could not possibly leave her.” “Poor girl!” Doris said. “I’m glad tomorrow will be Saturday again. I shall drive around and see if there is anything I can do for them. Mother would want me to. She likes Myra ever so much. She wanted to meet her when she returned the laundry last Thursday, and she said she thought her an unusually fine girl. Myra told Mother that she had hoped to be able to go through Teachers’ College that she might care for her mother, who is not strong. But now I suppose she will have to give up, just as she is about to graduate from High.” “O, I hope not!” Merry said. Then three of the boys approached to claim them as partners for a dance. |
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