"What, the candy?" teased Mr. Black.

"No, the cottage," explained Bettie, earnestly. "Oh, I do hope winter will be about six months late this year to make up for this."

"Perhaps it'll forget to come at all," breathed Mabel, hopefully. "I'd almost be willing to skip Christmas if there was any way of stretching this summer out to February. Somebody please pinch me--I'm afraid I'm dreaming--Oh! ouch! I didn't say _everybody_."

By this time, of course, all the young housekeepers' relatives were deeply interested in the cottage. After living for a never-to-be-forgotten week with the four unhappiest little girls in town, all were eager to reinstate them in the restored treasure. The girls, having rushed home with the joyful news, were almost overwhelmed with unexpected offers of parental assistance. The grown-ups were not only willing but anxious to help. Then, too, the Mapes boys and the young Tuckers almost came to blows over who should have the honor of mending the roof with the bundles of shingles that Dr. Bennett insisted on furnishing. Marjory's Aunty Jane said that if somebody who could drive nails without smashing his thumb would mend the holes in the parlor floor she would give the girls a pretty ingrain carpet, one side of which looked almost new. Dr. Bennett himself laid a clean new floor in the little kitchen over the rough old one, and Mrs. Mapes mended the broken plaster in all the rooms by pasting unbleached muslin over the holes. Mr. Tucker replaced all broken panes of glass, while his busy wife found time to tack mosquito-netting over the kitchen and pantry windows.

So interested, indeed, were all the grown-ups and all the brothers that the girls chuckled delightedly. It wouldn't have surprised them so very much if all their people had fallen suddenly to playing with dolls and to having tea-parties in the cottage; but the place was still far too disorderly for either of these juvenile occupations to prove attractive to anybody.

In the midst of the confusion, Mr. Downing stopped at the cottage door one noon and asked for the girls, who eyed him doubtfully and resentfully as they met him, after Marjory had hesitatingly ushered him into the untidy little parlor.

Mr. Downing smiled at them in a friendly but decidedly embarrassed manner. He had not forgotten his own lack of cordiality when the girls had called on him, and he wanted to atone for it. Mr. Black had tactfully but effectively pointed out to Mr. Downing--already deeply disgusted with the Milligans--the error of his ways, and Mr. Downing, as generous as he was hasty and irascible, was honest enough to admit that he had been mistaken not only in his estimate of Mr. Black, but also in his treatment of the little cottagers. Now, eager to make amends, he looked somewhat anxiously from one to another of his silent hostesses, who in return looked questioningly at Mr. Downing. Surely, with Mr.

Black in town, Mr. Downing _couldn't_ be thinking of turning them out a second time; still, he had disappointed them before, probably he would again, and the girls meant to take no chances. So they kept still, with searching eyes glued upon Mr. Downing's countenance. All at once, they realized that they were looking into friendly eyes, and three of them jumped to the conclusion that the junior warden was not the heartless monster they had considered him.

"I came," said Mr. Downing, noticing the change of expression in Bettie's face, "to offer you, with my apologies, this key and this little document. The paper, as you will see, is signed by all the vestrymen--my own name is written _very_ large--and it gives you the right to the use of this cottage until such time as the church feels rich enough to tear it down and build a new one. There is no immediate cause for alarm on this score, for there were only sixty-two cents in the plate last Sunday. I have come to the conclusion, young ladies, that I was overhasty in my judgment. I didn't understand the matter, and I'm afraid I acted without due consideration--I often do. But I hope you'll forgive me, for I sincerely beg _all_ your pardons."

"It's all right," said Bettie, "as long as it was just a mistake. It's easy to forgive mistakes."

"Yes," said Marjory, sagely, "we all make 'em."

"It's all right, anyway," added Jean.

Mr. Downing looked expectantly at Mabel, who for once had preserved a dead silence.

"Well?" he asked, interrogatively.

"I don't suppose I can ever really _quite_ forgive you," confessed Mabel, with evident reluctance. "It'll be awfully hard work, but I guess I can try."

"Perhaps my peace-offering will help your efforts a little," said Mr.

Downing, smiling. "It seems to be coming in now at your gate."

The girls turned hastily to look, but all they could see was a very untidy man with a large book under his arm.

"These," said Mr. Downing, taking the book from the man, who had walked in at the open door, "are samples of inexpensive wall papers. You're to choose as much as you need of the kinds you like best, and this man will put it wherever it will do the most good, and I'll pay the bill. Now, Miss Blue Eyes, do I stand a better chance of forgiveness?"

"Yes, yes!" cried Mabel. "I'm almost glad you needed to apologize. You did it beautifully, too. Mercy, when _I_ apologize--and I have to do a _fearful_ lot of apologizing--I don't begin to do it so nicely!"

"Perhaps," offered Mr. Downing, "when you've had as much practice as I have, it will come easier. I see, however, that you are far more suitable tenants than the Milligans would have been, for my humble apologies to them met with a very different reception. I assure you that, if there's ever any rivalry between you again, my vote goes with you--you're so easily satisfied. Now don't hesitate to choose whatever you want from this book. This paperhanger is yours, too, until you're done with him."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, _thank_ you," cried the girls, with happy voices, as Mr. Downing turned to go; "you _couldn't_ have thought of a nicer peace-offering."

Of course it took a long, long time for so many young housekeepers to choose papers for the parlor and the two bedrooms, but after much discussion and many differences of opinion, it was finally selected. The girls decided on green for the parlor, blue for one bedroom, and pink for the other, and they were easily persuaded to choose small patterns.

Then the smiling paperhanger worked with astonishing rapidity and said that he didn't object in the least to having four pairs of bright eyes watch from the doorway every strip go into place. It seemed to be no trouble at all to paper the little low-ceilinged cottage, and, oh! how beautiful it was when it was all done. The cool, cucumber-green parlor was just the right shade to melt into the soft blue and white of the front bedroom. As for the dainty pink room, as Bettie said rapturously, it fairly made one smell roses to look at it, it was so sweet.

It was finished by the following night, for no paperhanger could have had the heart to linger over his work with so many anxious eyes following every movement. Mrs. Tucker washed and ironed and mended the white muslin curtains; and, with such a bower to move into, the second moving-in and settling, the girls decided, was really better than the first. When their belongings were finally reinstalled in the cottage even Mabel no longer felt resentful toward the Milligans.

CHAPTER 20

The Odd Behavior of the Grown-ups

Even with all its ingenious though inexpensive improvements, the renovated cottage would probably have failed to satisfy a genuine rent-paying family, but to the contented girls it seemed absolutely perfect.

At last, it looked to everybody as if the long-deferred dinner party were actually to take place. There, in readiness, were the girls, the money, the cottage, and Mr. Black, and nothing had happened to Mrs.

Bartholomew Crane--who might easily, as Mabel suggested harrowingly, have moved away or died at any moment during the summer.

One day, very soon after the cottage was settled, a not-at-all-surprised Mr. Black and a very-much-astonished Mrs. Crane each received a formal invitation to dine under its reshingled roof. Composed by all four, the note was written by Jean, whose writing and spelling all conceded to be better than the combined efforts of the other three. Bettie delivered the notes with her own hand, two days before the event, and on the morning of the party she went a second time to each house to make certain that neither of the expected guests had forgotten the date.

"Forget!" exclaimed Mr. Black, standing framed in his own doorway. "My dear little girl, how _could_ I forget, when I've been saving room for that dinner ever since early last spring? Nothing, I assure you, could keep me away or even delay me. I have eaten a _very_ light breakfast, I shall go entirely without luncheon--"

"I wouldn't do that," warned Bettie. "You see it's our first dinner party and something _might_ go wrong. The soup might scorch--"

"It wouldn't have the heart to," said Mr. Black. "_No_ soup could be so unkind."

Of course the cottage was the busiest place imaginable during the days immediately preceding the dinner party. The girls had made elaborate plans and their pockets fairly bulged with lists of things that they were to be sure to remember and not on any account to forget. Then the time came for them to begin to do all the things that they had planned to do, and the cottage hummed like a hive of bees.

First the precious seven dollars and a half, swelled by some mysterious process to seven dollars and fifty-seven cents, had to be withdrawn from the bank, the most imposing building in town with its almost oppressive air of formal dignity. The rather diffident girls went in a body to get the money and looked with astonishment at the extra pennies.

"That's the interest," explained the cashier, noting with quiet amusement the puzzled faces.

"Oh," said Jean, "we've had that in school, but this is the first time we've ever seen any."

"We didn't suppose," supplemented Bettie, "that interest was real money.

_I_ thought it was something like those x-plus-y things that the boys have in algebra."

"Or like mermaids and goddesses," said Mabel.

"She means myths," interpreted Marjory.

"I see," said the cashier. "Perhaps you like real, tangible interest better than the kind you have in school."

"Oh, we do, we do!" cried the four girls.

"After this," confided Bettie, "it will be easier to study about."

Then, with the money carefully divided into three portions, placed in three separate purses, which in turn were deposited one each in Jean's, Marjory's, and Bettie's pockets, Mabel having flatly declined to burden herself with any such weighty responsibility, the four went to purchase their groceries.

The smiling clerks at the various shops confused them a little at first by offering them new brands of breakfast foods with strange, oddly spelled names, but the girls explained patiently at each place that they were giving a dinner party, not a breakfast, and that they wanted nothing but the things on their list. It took time and a great deal of discussion to make so many important purchases, but finally the groceries were all ordered.

Next the little housekeepers went to the butcher's to ask for a chicken.

"Vat kind of schicken you vant?" asked the stout, impatient German butcher.

Jean looked at Bettie, Bettie looked at Marjory, and Marjory, although she knew it was hopeless, looked at Mabel.