Poverty in the Cottage
"There's no use talking," said Jean, one day, as the girls sat at their dining-room table eating very smoky toast and drinking the weakest of cocoa, "we'll have to get some provisions of our own before long if we're going to invite Mr. Black to dinner as we promised. The cupboard's perfectly empty and Bridget says I can't take another scrap of bread or one more potato out of the house this week."
"Aunty Jane says there'll be trouble," said Marjory, "if I don't keep out of her ice box, so I guess I can't bring any more milk. When she says there'll be trouble, there usually is, if I'm not pretty careful. But dear me, it is such fun to cook our own meals on that dear little box-stove, even if most of the things do taste pretty awful."
"I wish," said Mabel, mournfully, "that somebody would give us a hen, so we could make omelets."
"Who ever made omelets out of a hen?" asked Jean, laughing.
"I meant out of the eggs, of course," said Mabel, with dignity. "Hens lay eggs, don't they? If we count on five or six eggs a day—"
"The goose that laid the golden egg laid only one a day," said Marjory. "It seems to me that six is a good many."
"I wasn't talking about geese," said Mabel, "but about just plain everyday hens."
"Six-every-day hens, you mean, don't you?" asked Marjory, teasingly. "You'd better wish for a cow, too, while you're about it."
"Yes," said Bettie, "we certainly need one, for I'm not to ask for butter more than twice a week. Mother says she'll be in the poorhouse before summer's over if she has to provide butter for two families."
"I just tell you what it is, girls," said Jean, nibbling her cindery crust, "we'll just have to earn some money if we're to give Mr. Black any kind of a dinner."
Mabel, who always accepted new ideas with enthusiasm, slipped quietly into the kitchen, took a solitary lemon from the cupboard, cut it in half, and squeezed the juice into a broken-nosed pitcher. This done, she added a little sugar and a great deal of water to the lemon juice, slipped quietly out of the back door, ran around the house and in at the front door, taking a small table from the front room. This she carried out of doors to the corner of the lot facing the street, where she established her lemonade stand.
She was almost immediately successful, for the day was warm, and Mrs. Bartholomew Crane, who was entertaining two visitors on her front porch, was glad of an opportunity to offer her guests something in the way of refreshment. The cottage boasted only one glass that did not leak, but Mabel cheerfully made three trips across the street with it—it did not occur to any of them until too late it would have been easier to carry the pitcher across in the first place. The lemonade was decidedly weak, but the visitors were too polite to say so. On her return, a thirsty small boy offered Mabel a nickel for all that was left in the pitcher, and Mabel, after a moment's hesitation, accepted the offer.
"You're getting a bargain," said Mabel. "There's as much as a glass and three quarters there, besides all the lemon."
"Did you get a whole pitcherful out of one lemon?" asked the boy. "You'd be able to make circus lemonade all right."
Before the other girls had had time to discover what had become of her, the proprietor of the lemonade stand marched into the cottage and proudly displayed four shining nickels and the empty pitcher.
"Why, where in the world did you get all that?" cried Marjory. "Surely you never earned it by being on time for meals—you've been late three times a day ever since we got the cottage."
"Sold lemonade," said Mabel. "Our troubles are over, girls. I'm going to buy two lemons tomorrow and sell twice as much."
"Good!" cried Bettie, "I'll help. The boys have promised to bring me a lot of arbutus tonight—they went to the woods this morning. I'll tie it in bunches and perhaps we can sell that, too."
"Wouldn't it be splendid if we could have Mr. Black here to dinner next Saturday?" said Jean. "I'll never be satisfied until we've kept that promise, but I don't suppose we could possibly get enough things together by that time."
"I have a sample can of baking powder," offered Marjory, hopefully. "I'll bring it over next time I come."
"What's the good?" asked matter-of-fact Mabel. "We can't feed Mr. Black on just plain baking powder, and we haven't any biscuits to raise with it."
"Dear me," said Jean, "I wish we hadn't been so extravagant at first. If we hadn't had so many tea parties last week, we might get enough flour and things at home. Mother says it's too expensive having all her groceries carried off."
"Never mind," consoled Mabel, confidently. "We'll be buying our own groceries by this time tomorrow with the money we make selling lemonade. A boy said my lemonade was quite as good as you can buy at the circus."
Unfortunately, however, it rained the next day and the next, so lemonade was out of the question. By the time it cleared, Bettie's neat little bunches of arbutus were no longer fresh, and careless Mabel had forgotten where she had put the money. She mentioned no fewer than twenty-two places where the four precious nickels might be, but none of them happened to be the right one.
"Mercy me," said Bettie, "it's dreadful to be so poor! I'm afraid we'll have to invite Mr. Black to one of our bread-and-sugar tea-parties, after all."
"No," said Jean, firmly. "We've just got to give him a regular seven-course dinner—he has 'em every day at home. We'll have to put it off until we can do it in style."
"By and by," said Mabel, "we'll have beans and radishes and things in our own garden, and we can go to the woods for berries."
"Perhaps," said Bettie, hopefully, "one of the boys might catch a fish—Rob almost did, once."
"I suppose I could ask Aunty Jane for a potato once in a while," said Marjory, "but I'll have to give her time to forget about last month's grocery bill—she says we never before used so many eggs in one month and I guess Maggie did give me a good many. Potatoes will keep, you know. We can save 'em until we have enough for a meal."
"While we're about it," said Bettie, "I think we'd better have Mrs. Crane to dinner, too. She's such a nice old lady and she's been awfully good to us."
"She's not very well off," agreed Mabel, "and probably a real, first-class dinner would taste good to her."
"But," pleaded Bettie, "don't let's ask her until we're sure of the date. As it is, I can't sleep nights for thinking of how Mr. Black must feel. He'll think we don't want him."
"You'd better explain to him," suggested Jean, "that it isn't convenient to have him just yet, but that we're going to just as soon as ever we can. We mustn't tell him why, because it would be just like him to send the provisions here himself, and then it wouldn't really be our party."
In spite of all the girls' plans, however, by the end of the week the cottage larder was still distressingly empty. Marjory had, indeed, industriously collected potatoes, only to have them carried off by an equally industrious rat; and Mabel's four nickels still remained missing. Things in the vegetable garden seemed singularly backward, possibly because the four eager gardeners kept digging them up to see if they were growing. Their parents and Marjory's Aunty Jane were firmer than ever in their refusal to part with any more staple groceries.
Perhaps if the girls had explained why they wanted the things, their relatives would have been more generous; but girllike, the four poverty-stricken young housekeepers made a deep mystery of their dinner plan. It was their most cherished secret, and when they met each morning they always said, mysteriously, "Good morning—remember M. B. D.," which meant, of course, "Mr. Black's Dinner."
Mr. Black, indeed, never went by without referring to the girls' promise.
"When," he would ask, "is that dinner party coming off? It's a long time since I've been invited to a first-class dinner, cooked by four accomplished young ladies, and I'm getting hungrier every minute. When I get up in the morning I always say: 'Now I won't eat much breakfast because I've got to save room for that dinner'—and then, after all, I don't get invited."
The situation was growing really embarrassing. The girls began to feel that keeping house, not to mention giving dinner parties, with no income whatever, was anything but a joke.