Polly looked up with a smile. "Wasn't it?" she cried radiantly.

"And Father says Joe does the lists so well," said Jasper heartily; "he sticks at it every day like a leech, and there can't anything get him off to play till the hour is over."

"Well, I don't see how he can," said Alexia, drawing a long breath. "Dear me, it would just tire me to death. Why, Polly Pepper!" Alexia threw clown her pen and stared at her. "When is the first meeting to be?"

"Why, you know," said Polly, writing away, laboriously; "next Wednesday evening, of course."

"Well, we don't say so," said Alexia. "How in the world are they to know?"

The other members of the Committee stopped work immediately and glanced ruefully at the little pile of notices acc.u.mulating in the middle of the table.

"We can never write those all over," began Polly tragically.

Pickering put out a long hand and picked out from the pile the one he had written.

"I shall just write, 'Wednesday evening, July 21st,' down in one corner,"

he said.

"Oh, goody!" exclaimed Alexia, her face brightening; "I shall do mine so"--pulling out her scrawls from the heap of notices.

"But we don't tell where the meeting is to be," said Jasper after they had all fallen to work again.

At this second fright no one seemed to be able to speak. It was Alexia who first found her voice.

"Why not put it in the other corner?" she said.

"And that just balances," said Jasper, holding one of his notices up when the two additions had been made, "so it really looks better than ever."

"But we mustn't make any more blunders," observed Pickering wisely, "for we haven't any extra corners to go to now."

"Oh, we aren't going to make any," declared Alexia, "and we will soon be through, thank goodness!"--as the pens set up lively work once more.

"I hope so." Polly gave a long sigh. "Oh, dear me! it wouldn't be one-half so hard to do cooking for the Club, as to write a single one of these things."

XXV

JACK PARISH

"Grandpapa!" Joel came in with a shout, rushed around the room two or three times, and finally came up to the big writing-table, quite blown.

"Dear me!" exclaimed old Mr. King, laying down his pen, "have you really got through, Joe?"

"Grandpapa," said Joel, his black eyes shining, and bobbing over his head to get a good look into the old gentleman's face, "she's asked him, she really has!"

"Who?" asked Mr. King, very much puzzled.

"Mrs. Sterling," said Joel, in a tone of the greatest satisfaction. Then he began to dance again, snapping his brown fingers to keep time.

"When you come out of that war dance, Joel," said old Mr. King, leaning back in his big chair to laugh at him, "perhaps you'll have the goodness to tell me whom you are talking about all this time."

Joel stopped his mad career and ran up to the old gentleman's side.

"Why Jack Parish--I thought you knew, Grandpapa," he added reproachfully.

"I suppose I might have known if I'd stopped to consider that you've talked your Parish boy every day since the little affair on the pond," said Mr.

King, still laughing. "Well, and so Mrs. Sterling has invited your friend, Joel, to some festivity, I suppose, eh?"

"Yes," said Joel, "she has"--his satisfaction returning--"it's a supper at her house, to-morrow night, Grandpapa." He leaned over to bring his brown cheek close to the one under the white hair. "Just think of that!"

"Whew!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the old gentleman, "and she hasn't had company for ten years!"

"Well, she's going to have us, every single one in the Comfort committee,"

declared Joel decidedly, "and she asked Jack, most particularly; she did, Grandpapa--she really did. May I go down and tell him now? May I, Grandpapa?" he cried eagerly.

"Why, if your mother says so, I suppose--" began Mr. King.

"She says I may go, if you think best," cried Joel, hanging to the arms of the big chair and having hard work to curb his impatience. "Oh, Grandpapa, please hurry and say yes."

Instead of complying with this demand, the old gentleman leaned back in his chair and steadily gazed into s.p.a.ce while he revolved something in his mind. At last, when Joel thought he couldn't brook the delay another minute, Mr. King whirled suddenly around in his chair.

"I tell you what it is, Joel, you and I will go down to see your friend ourselves."

"Oh, Grandpapa!" Joel gave a leap, and seized Mr. King's arm with both hands. "Right away now?" he cried, with sparkling eyes.

"Right away now," declared old Mr. King, getting out of his chair; "that is, as soon as we can make ourselves presentable for our walk. Goodness me, Joe, what a whirlwind you are!"--bursting into another laugh.

Joel didn't care what he was called so long as he was really going to see Jack Parish and carry him the wonderful invitation, and all the way down to the little grocer's on Common Street he just bubbled over with happiness, till everybody who pa.s.sed the two felt a glow at the heart at the merry comrades: and many were the backward glances cast at the old, white-haired gentleman of stately mien, with a chubby-faced boy of the jolliest appearance hanging to his hand.

"Well, well, well, and so here we are." Old Mr. King looked up curiously at the little sign above the door--"Ichabod Parish, Grocer"--then down over the shop windows overrunning with canned goods, and, to finish up, an outside stall on which jostled and overcrowded each other every description of vegetable in the market, from a cabbage down. A fat, red-faced man with a big ap.r.o.n that had been white earlier in the day, came out of the shop and stood by the stall.

"Anything in our line to-day, sir?" he said. He had a little pad of paper in one hand and a pencil in the other.

"Well, yes," said old Mr. King, with a twinkle in his eye, for by this time he perceived some lines along the fat cheeks that showed very plainly the habit of smiles running up and down in them. "I've come for a boy, if you please."

"A boy?" said the fat, red-faced man, laughing, till the round cheeks were all wrinkled up. "Well, now, I take it, you're joking, sir."

"Oh, no, I'm not," said old Mr. King very seriously, but the other man had been just as observing in his way, and had seen the twinkle in the keen eyes. So now he laughed some more and waited patiently for the joke to be explained.

"I take it you have a boy named Jack, hereabout," said Mr. King presently.

All the wrinkles dropped suddenly out of the fat, red cheeks. "He hain't done nothin' wrong, Jack hain't?" gasped the man.

"Oh, Grandpapa, tell him what we've come for," cried Joel, twitching Mr.

King's hand, and quite aghast to see the suffering in Jack's father. "Do, please, Grandpapa."