CHAPTER XIV
A HONEYSUCKLE SECRET
“I don’t see why not,” panted Mrs. Smalley to Mrs. Brownell. She was holding in her trembling hands the huge glass case of waxed passion flowers, and every time the case shook even a little in her trembling hands, the flowers would shed a few hunks of wax. It was so very old, you see, and wax is wax.
“The reason why I don’t wish anything placed upon our table,” replied the elegant Mrs. Brownell, using all her social powers in an effort to appear polite, “is because of the exquisite grain of the wood. Just look at that,” she begged the excited Mrs. Smalley.
“Yes, I see,” said Mrs. Smalley blindly, for she couldn’t have seen over that glass case, and besides, she wasn’t looking that way. “But they are both of the same period,” she pointed out as if she knew.
“Same period!” gasped Mrs. Brownell. “Why!” She pronounced that “why” as if it were composed of two syllables—“why-eeh!” And then she could hardly speak from sheer disdain. “Our table,” she continued to orate, “is of the very early American period, but you know, dear Mrs. Smalley, wax flowers are not even classified.”
“What did I tell you?” said Babs to Cara. “Here’s the fight we were hoping for, right upon our heads. Ruth,” she called ever so lightly, for Ruth was actually staring at the women with unhidden glee. “Ruth, will you please—do something!”
“What,” drawled Ruth, her mouth staying open as if she hated to miss anything by closing it. “What can I do, Babs?” she finally managed to ask, still watching the women.
“You can grab a few things from the ladies as they enter,” Babs suggested. She too was having a good time, for the table-wax-flower dispute was still going strong.
“They’re actually taking sides,” Cara chuckled. “There are three with Mrs. Smalley and four with Mrs. Brownell. Babs, you can’t expect us to work while this is going on.”
“I don’t, I know better. But here comes another glass case. Looks like somebody’s dead head of hair tangled up into snarls they call flowers.”
“Dead head of hair!” gasped Louise.
“Yes. Don’t you know they used to make flowers out of the hair of the dear, dead departed?” Babs continued, chuckling.
“Horrors!” exclaimed Louise.
“Exactly. And this is going to be a horrible show. Oh, Mrs. Dickerson,” Babs chirped gaily to the latest arrival in the glass case department, “what a perfectly beautiful case of flowers!” and she clasped her hands ecstatically. “Do give it to Esther to place for you. Here, Esther,” and the happy lady with the monstrosity turned beamingly upon Esther. So that glass case changed hands promptly.
“You girls are so—so smart,” whined little Mrs. Dickerson, “to take hold so, so fine.” She had a lot of trouble with her adjectives. “We knowed you would. That’s why we picked out Barbara Hale. She’s so, so smart,” declared the flustered lady, casting fond glances upon Esther who was almost petrified with her task of “placing” the hair flowers somewhere “to advantage.”
“How’s the fight coming along?” Cara sidled up to ask Babs.
“Mrs. Brownell may have her table removed if the chairman doesn’t soon arrive. It seems a table is a table, and folks are bound to set things on it,” said Babs, almost laughing outright at the absurdity of the situation.
“Cricky!” exclaimed Cara, using her father’s favorite expletive, “what on earth is this coming?”
“Looks like a portable bath-tub,” replied Babs as Mrs. Ricketts, the fattest woman one could possibly imagine being able to carry anything except fat, puffed up the steps, her arms encircling like a balloon auto tire, a great, big dish.
“My tureen,” she exhaled. “Nothing like this in your collection, I’ll say. It’s been in our family for more than one hundred years. Where can I set it down? It’s awfully heavy!”
“Yes, it must be,” readily agreed Ruth, who was in line to accept the big dish. “I wonder where we can put it.”
“On that table. Just the place. It will show off beautifully there. Set it right down——”
“But I’m afraid we can’t, Mrs. Ricketts,” Cara just caught her. “That’s Mrs. Brownell’s table and she wants it left clear to show the grain of the wood.”
“Grain of the wood!” repeated the stout lady deridingly. “As if a big table like that could take up room with nothing on it. Here, I’ll put my tureen on it, and if Mrs. Brownell——”
“Yes?” The little word came from Mrs. Brownell’s lips. “Your dish is really antique. What a pity it is cracked,” and she adjusted her silver-framed glasses to see the crack more clearly.
“Cracked!” Mrs. Ricketts wore no glasses but she had very penetrating eyes, and she fairly glared at her old soup tureen as she repeated Mrs. Brownell’s charge against it. “It is no such thing—cracked!”
“Aren’t these cracks?” Nothing could ruffle the magnificent Mrs. Brownell. She had poise.
“No. They are merely tissue scratches. We had an opinion——”
But the argument was lost on the girls. They didn’t care a whoopee about tissue scratches, or cracks on ugly old soup tureens. What they were interested in was the fight, according to Cara.
“And I’ll bet the table wins,” she told Esther. “It’s quite a table, isn’t it?”
“Quite a soup tureen, too,” replied Esther, “and Mrs. Ricketts is bigger than Mrs. Brownell.”
It was fun, after all, to be on the girls’ committee, for not only were the exhibits the queerest old things imaginable, but the women who brought the articles were queer, and if not always old, at least not very young.
And they took so much pride in the heirlooms that the Home Exhibit afforded them a rare treat, indeed. Mrs. Brownell’s table and Mrs. Rickett’s soup tureen were merely samples of the goods contributed, but it was the needlework and the quilts that formed the bulk and real problem of the exhibit.
“Where’ll I hang this?” Louise would call out, holding up as much as she could manage of a red and white log-cabin quilt.
Then the owner would start in giving orders. She would want it hung “just so” over the balustrade.
“But the silk quilts and handwoven portieres are to hang over the balustrade,” Miss Trainor would insist. “Mrs. Winters arranged all that.” Mrs. Winters was general chairman and certainly should have been on hand on this afternoon; but she wasn’t.
“These tidies,” pleaded quiet little Lida, quite helplessly, “where can we show the tidies?”
“We’ve simply got to have a special place for the small handwork,” Cara said sensibly. “We’ll drown in tidies and center-pieces if we don’t. Dad would send a carpenter over to fix up a nice rack, with hooks that couldn’t tear. Where’s Babs?”
“Yes, where is Babs?” joined in a number of the girls, for Barbara being chairman of the girls’ committee, and the girls being in charge of all the ladder climbing and the dusting of the old nooks and cobwebby corners—to say nothing of taking the goods from the loving hands of the lenders—they certainly expected Barbara to be around all the time and in every place at once.
But just now she could not be found. The Stillwell House on the ocean front, chosen as the most suitable and convenient place to hold the summer exhibit, contained plenty of rooms and was built like a farm-house, with the entire first-floor rooms connecting by wide doorways and passages. The house had not been used as a summer home for a number of years, and those of the pretty little colony who understood values, considered the quaint place as a possible public library and Community Center for Sea Cosset.
Miss Mary-Louise Trainor had planned the Home Exhibit mainly to interest people in such a plan, and she knew perfectly well that one of the best ways of obtaining real publicity for a scheme is to have a girls’ committee work on it. The girls will talk, they will tell everybody everything interesting, and if it was a wonderful old place, which the Stillwell place really was, the girls could be depended upon to let everybody know it.
“But where’s Babs?” Louise asked impatiently. “I just don’t know what to do with this pewter teapot.”
“She won’t know either,” pointed out Ruth. “Stick it over on the spinet.”
“And have my head taken off by Miss Douglass. That’s her spinet,” declared Louise.
“Now Cara has disappeared,” groaned Ruth. “Let’s go and see what’s going on. I know they went out on the back porch.” She was whispering this. “Let’s sneak out and surprise them.”
But Louise and Ruth could not sneak out and leave Esther and Lida alone to battle with the exhibits. So they turned to help Lida while Cara and Babs were still lost to the work and workers of the room.
The back porch of the old house was entirely screened in with high sweet-fern bushes, that one growing green that thrives on sandy soil and in a salty atmosphere. So thick were these bushes that the porch was almost dark behind them, and when Cara tiptoed out she was easily able to reach the little square extension, and hide there without being seen.
“Some one is with her!” Cara was almost saying, for Babs was talking earnestly to some one at the other end of the porch.
“A boy! And he’s crying!” Cara crouched down guiltily for she felt she was seeing and listening to something very, very secret.
Babs spoke, but the boy sobbed. He was actually crying, and that was a remarkable thing for Nicky to do.
Cara could see it was Nicky who was with Babs, although the boy’s form was almost entirely shrouded in the heavy vines that clambered all over the end of the porch.
Then a child’s voice, heavy with sobs, called out too loud to be unheard by any one on that porch.
“But I’ve got to. I tell you we must have it. I’ve got to——”
“Hush!” checked Babs. “They’ll hear you. Don’t worry, Nicky, it will be all right. You can trust us, can’t you?”
“Yes, I can trust you,” came the reluctant answer.
“And no one will know you came,” said Babs very softly, but her voice was perfectly distinct to the other girl in her uncomfortable hiding place.
“I’ve got to get back,” Cara told herself. “I must not let them know I was here.” She just slipped quietly over the rail, between the big bushes, and when Babs, her face strangely flushed, came back to her tasks at the show-room, Cara was just folding up another quilt and forcing little squeaks of pretended admiration, so that Mrs. Baker would be pleased.
But what was the matter with Nicky?
What was he and Babs hiding?
Why was that brave little fellow sobbing so heavily?
A queer sort of secret for girls, this seemed to be, but Cara could not possibly disclose her part in it, and she knew perfectly well that Babs was not likely to say anything about hers.