"I don't see what we can do," half moaned Edith.

"I'll show you," cried Julia hopefully. "You have plenty of sugar and eggs--and----"

"But really there isn't time to make anything not to speak of baking it, and, oh, dear, I am so unlucky!" sighed poor Edith.

"Nonsense," said Julia. "You haven't any idea what I can do. I shall just have to show you," and she began to break the eggs into a bowl, beating them and stirring into them a liberal amount of sugar. "Run, Brenda," she cried, "and bring me a sheet of that brown wrapping paper."

Brenda obeyed, and after b.u.t.tering the paper, Julia dropped her mixture of sugar and eggs, a spoonful at a time, here and there, on the paper.

"Oh, I know," cried Brenda. "Kisses, but I never would have thought of it myself."

"Well," responded Julia, "there is nothing you can bake so quickly, and almost every one likes them. There, this first batch must be ready now,"

and she opened the oven door to remove the pan with its sheet of kisses, delicately browned and of the size and shape that a confectioner could not surpa.s.s. Two or three other lots were baked before there were enough. By the time they were finished Edith's finger had ceased to pain her, and she was helping place the other eatables on the dumb-waiter.

From the floor above there came the sound of laughter, and the voices of the boys could be heard mingled with those of the girls as they called to the three kitchen maidens.

At last, with the help of Hannah, the maid, who had come down from the floor above, all the kitchen work was declared at an end.

"That's all," shouted Brenda, as Belle and Philip gave a final pull on the cords of the dumb-waiter.

A moment later Edith and Julia and Brenda entered the dining-room, with faces perhaps a little flushed, but otherwise looking very unlike the three cooks they had been a few minutes before.

Under Nora's direction the dining-table had been exquisitely arranged.

There was a great gla.s.s bowl of pink roses in the centre, and the plates and cups were of china with a wild rose border. The candles in the silver candelabra at each end of the table had pink shades.

"There, you go, Philip, and tell the others that supper is ready," said Nora, glancing at the table and giving a final touch to one or two dishes.

With Philip leading, the guests trooped into the dining-room. "Trooped"

is perhaps too boisterous a word to apply to the procession of young people who came into the room two at a time with a fair amount of dignity. To Julia, in fact, they appeared to a certain extent to be imitating the demeanor of their elders. She could not help thinking that the manner with which Belle let herself be led to a chair was entirely too coquettish, and only Nora seemed to be her real self in the presence of the guests.

But Julia was not a harsh critic, and before very long she forgot that she had not always known these merry young people. She laughed at the jokes made by the boys, although she did not always see the point of them. Most of these jokes turned on something connected with college.

For every one of them was in Harvard, although some were only Freshmen.

The stories that they thought the funniest dealt with the queer things that some of their friends had had to do when undergoing initiation into one of the College Societies, and many of their doings seemed really inane.

Before they had been long in the dining-room Mrs. Gostar joined them, and later Dr. Gostar himself appeared. The presence of these elder people lessened the laughter only a very little, for all the young people knew that Dr. Gostar enjoyed fun as well as they.

"What was the catastrophe to-night?" he asked Nora, for it was a favorite joke of his that at each meeting of the cooking-cla.s.s some dish suffered. When he had heard about the disaster to Edith's cake he praised Julia so heartily for having come to the rescue that she blushed deeply. Even without this success in cooking, Julia would have been voted a great addition to the cooking-cla.s.s. There was something very pleasing in her gentle manners, and Belle, to her surprise, found herself growing a little jealous of Brenda's cousin. Before this she had not thought her sufficiently important to arouse jealousy.

XII

CONCERNING JULIA

In the meantime the Four Club held regular meetings, and every Thursday afternoon Julia heard Edith and Nora and Belle rushing up past her door to Brenda's room on the floor above. Of course in a general way she knew what was going on, for the affairs of the Four Club were no secret. Yet although from time to time Brenda and her friends dropped a word or two regarding their doings, they never talked very freely about the club.

Nora and Edith were silent because they were sorry that they could not persuade Brenda to let them invite Julia to the meetings. Brenda said little about the club, because possibly she was ashamed of her own indifference. As to Belle, she never had had much to say to Julia, and in this case although she felt pleased that her influence chiefly had kept Brenda from counting her cousin in the club group, she hardly ventured to express this feeling in words. There might as well have been five girls as four in the group working for the Bazaar and no one knew this better than Brenda and Belle themselves.

Although Julia had a pretty correct idea of what was going on, she tried to show no feeling in the matter. Her studies, her music, and her exercise occupied almost all her afternoons, and she reasoned with herself that even if she had been invited, it would have been only a waste of time for her to spend hours at fancy-work, which might otherwise have been more profitably employed. But after a while, when through the half-open door she heard her friends running upstairs, she sometimes felt a thrill of disappointment that they did not care enough for her to stop on their way to ask her to join them. Now Julia meant always to be fair in her thoughts, as well as in her actions towards others. So at first when she found that she was left out of the plans of her cousin and her friends, she reasoned with herself somewhat in this fashion.

"Now, Julia, you know that you are a newcomer, and you cannot expect that you will be taken in all at once, just wait."

But after she had waited a good while, she began to feel a little hurt, although she did her best to conceal her feeling from Nora and Edith. In the meantime the latter two girls argued warmly with Brenda, and tried to make her see that it was mean to keep Julia out of the Four Club.

"Nonsense," said Belle, who happened to overhear them, "Julia herself would say that it was awfully stupid to sit for a whole afternoon, sewing."

"Well, if she did not work harder than--well than Brenda does, she would not be very much bored; besides she could look out of the window part of the time, the view there is perfectly fine," responded the lively Nora.

Brenda had tried to speak when Nora had made this very unflattering allusion to her own lack of industry, and when Nora finished she said, holding up a square of linen on which a wreath of yellow flowers was half embroidered,

"There, I've done all this this month."

"That's very good for you," said Belle, patronizingly, "but I'd be willing to bet----"

"Don't say 'bet,'" murmured Edith.

"I'd be willing to bet anything," continued Belle, "that you'll never finish it."

"Why, Belle," continued the others.

"No, you won't," repeated Belle, "you never could, you'll get tired of the pattern or of the color, or you will spoil it in some way, and throw it into the fire, or worse into that bottom drawer of yours with all those other specimens."

Brenda, instead of growing angry at this, only laughed.

"Well if I don't wish to finish it, I certainly won't," she replied.

"But it happens that I have made up my mind to finish it this Autumn, before Christmas, in fact, so you can make your bet as large as you please, and pay the money into the fund for Manuel's benefit, for I shall win."

The girls were all a little surprised at Brenda's reply. She was more ready usually to answer pettishly any criticism made by Belle.

"Very well," said Belle, "Edith and Nora are my witnesses, and we shall watch to see when you finish that centrepiece."

"Yes, indeed, Brenda," laughed Nora, "indeed we shall follow the career of this wreath with great interest, and now since you seem to be in an amiable frame of mind, let us go back to Julia. It seems terribly mean not to ask her to join us."

The pleasant expression on Brenda's face changed to a frown.

"I've told you often that Julia would not enjoy working with us, and it would just spoil everything to have her come."

"Of course it's your house, Brenda, and you started the club, and Julia is your cousin, so Edith and I have not the same right to say anything, but it seems to me very unkind to leave her out."

"There, I don't want to hear anything more about it," cried Brenda, "haven't Belle and I both said that Julia would not enjoy herself, sewing with us, and it would not be a 'four club,' and I don't want to hear anything more about it."

By this time Brenda's voice was positively snappish, and Edith looked up in alarm. But Nora was undismayed.

"Nonsense, Brenda," she cried, "Belle said that Julia would not enjoy the cooking cla.s.s, though I'm perfectly sure that no one there had a better time, and the boys thought that she was splendid, didn't they, Edith?"

"Yes," returned Edith, "Philip was surprised; he said she was fine, he always supposed that she was a kind of blue-stocking with gla.s.ses, and----"