Rosamond's ship-coil party was a great success. It resolved itself into Rosamond's party, although Barbara had had the first thought of it; for Rosamond quietly took the management of all that was to be delicately and gracefully arranged, and to have the true tone of high propriety.

Barbara made the little white rolls; Rosamond and Ruth beat up the cake; mother attended to the boiling of the tongues, and, when it was time, to the making of the delicious coffee; all together we gave all sorts of pleasant touches to the brown room, and set the round table (the old cover could be "shied" out of sight now, as Stephen said, and replaced with the white glistening damask for the tea) in the corner between the southwest windows that opened upon the broad piazza.

The table was bright with pretty silver--not too much--and best gla.s.s and delicate porcelain with a tiny thread of gold; and the rolls and the thin strips of tongue cut lengthwise, so rich and tender that a fork could manage them, and the large raspberries, black and red and white, were upon plates and dishes of real Indian, white and golden brown.

The wide sashes were thrown up, and there were light chairs outside; Mrs. Holabird would give the guests tea and coffee, and Ruth and Barbara would sit in the window-seats and do the waiting, back and forth, and Dakie Thayne and Harry Goldthwaite would help.

Katty held her office as a sinecure that day; looked on admiringly, forgot half her regular work, felt as if she had somehow done wonders without realizing the process, and p.r.o.nounced that it was "no throuble at ahl to have company."

But before the tea was the new game.

It was a bold stroke for us Holabirds. Originating was usually done higher up; as the Papal Council gives forth new spiritual inventions for the joyful acceptance of believers, who may by no means invent in their turn and offer to the Council. One could hardly tell how it would fall out,--whether the Haddens and the Marchbankses would take to it, or whether it would drop right there.

"They _may_ 'take it off your hands, my dear,'" suggested the remorseless Barbara. Somebody had offered to do that once for Mrs.

Holabird, when her husband had had an interest in a ship in the Baltic trade, and some furs had come home, richer than we had quite expected.

Rose was loftily silent; she would not have _said_ that to her very self; but she had her little quiet instincts of holding on,--through Harry Goldthwaite, chiefly; it was his novelty.

Does this seem _very_ bare worldly scheming among young girls who should simply have been having a good time? We should not tell you if we did not know; it _begins_ right there among them, in just such things as these; and our day and our life are full of it.

The Marchbanks set had a way of taking things off people's hands, as soon as they were proved worth while. People like the Holabirds could not be taking this pains every day; making their cakes and their coffee, and setting their tea-table in their parlor; putting aside all that was shabby or inadequate, for a few special hours, and turning all the family resources upon a point, to serve an occasion. But if anything new or bright were so produced that could be transplanted, it was so easy to receive it among the established and every-day elegances of a freer living, give it a wider introduction, and so adopt and repeat and centralize it that the originators should fairly forget they had ever begun it. And why would not this be honor enough?

Invention must always pa.s.s over to the capital that can handle it.

The new game charmed them all. The girls had the best of it, for the young men always gathered up the rings and brought them to each in turn. It was very pretty to receive both hands full of the gayly wreathed and knotted hoops, to hold them slidden along one arm like garlands, to pa.s.s them lightly from hand to hand again, and to toss them one by one through the air with a motion of more or less inevitable grace; and the excitement of hope or of success grew with each succeeding trial.

They could not help liking it, even the most fastidious; they might venture upon liking it, for it was a game with an origin and references. It was an officers' game, on board great naval ships; it had proper and sufficient antecedents. It would do.

By the time they stopped playing in the twilight, and went up the wide end steps upon the deep, open platform, where coffee and biscuits began to be fragrant, Rosamond knew that her party was as nice as if it had been anybody's else whoever; that they were all having as genuinely good a time as if they had not come "westover" to get it.

And everybody does like a delicious tea, such as is far more sure and very different from hands like Mrs. Holabird's and her daughters, than from those of a city confectioner and the most professed of private cooks.

It all went off and ended in a glory,--the glory of the sun pouring great backward floods of light and color all up to the summer zenith, and of the softly falling and changing shade, and the slow forth-coming of the stars: and Ruth gave them music, and by and by they had a little German, out there on the long, wide esplanade. It was the one magnificence of their house,--this high, s.p.a.cious terrace; Rosamond was thankful every day that Grandfather Holabird _had_ to build the wood-house under it.

After this, Westover began to grow to be more of a centre than our home, cheery and full of girl-life as it was, had ever been able to become before.

They might have transplanted the game,--they did take slips from it,--and we might not always have had tickets to our own play; but they could not transplant Harry Goldthwaite and Dakie Thayne. They _would_ come over, nearly every day, at morning or evening, and practise "coil," or make some other plan or errand; and so there came to be always something going on at the Holabirds', and if the other girls wanted it, they had to come where it was.

Mrs. Van Alstyne came often; Rosamond grew very intimate with her.

Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks did say, one day, that she thought "the Holabirds were slightly mistaking their position"; but the remark did not come round, westover, till long afterward, and meanwhile the position remained the same.

It was right in the midst of all this that Ruth astonished the family again, one evening.

"I wish," she said, suddenly, just as if she were not suggesting something utterly incongruous and disastrous, "that we could ask Lucilla Waters up here for a little visit."

The girls had a way, in Z----, of spending two or three days together at each other's houses, neighbors though they were, within easy reach, and seeing each other almost constantly. Leslie Goldthwaite came up to the Haddens', or they went down to the Goldthwaites'. The Haddens would stay over night at the Marchbanks', and on through the next day, and over night again. There were, indeed, three recognized degrees of intimacy: that which took tea,--that which came in of a morning and stayed to lunch,--and that which was kept over night without plan or ceremony. It had never been very easy for us Holabirds to do such things without plan; of all things, nearly, in the world, it seemed to us sometimes beautiful and desirable to be able to live just so as that we might.

"I wish," said Ruth, "that we could have Lucilla Waters here."

"My gracious!" cried Rosamond, startled into a soft explosion. "What for?"

"Why, I think she'd like it," answered Ruth.

"Well, I suppose Arctura Fish might 'like it' too," responded Rose, in a deadly quiet way now, that was the extreme of sarcasm.

Ruth looked puzzled; as if she really considered what Rosamond suggested, not having thought of it before, and not quite knowing how to dispose of the thought since she had got it.

Dakie Thayne was there; he sat holding some gold-colored wool for Mrs.

Holabird to wind; she was giving herself the luxury of some pretty knitting,--making a bright little sofa affghan. Ruth had forgotten him at the instant, speaking out of a quiet pause and her own intent thought.

She made up her mind presently,--partly at least,--and spoke again. "I don't believe," she said, "that it would be the next thing for Arctura Fish."

Dakie Thayne's eyebrows went up, just that half perceptible line or two. "Do you think people ought always to have the next thing?" he asked.

"It seems to me it must be somebody's fault if they don't," replied Ruth.

"It is a long waiting sometimes to get the next thing," said Dakie Thayne. "Army men find that out. They grow gray getting it."

"That's where only one _can_ have it at a time," said Ruth. "These things are different."

"'Next things' interfere occasionally," said Barbara. "Next things up, and next things down."

"I don't know," said Rose, serenely unconscious and impersonal. "I suppose people wouldn't naturally--it can't be meant they should--walk right away from their own opportunities."

Ruth laughed,--not aloud, only a little single breath, over her work.

Dakie Thayne leaned back.

"What,--if you please,--Miss Ruth?"

"I was thinking of the opportunities _down_," Ruth answered.

It was several days after this that the young party drifted together again, on the Westover lawn. A plan was discussed. Mrs. Van Alstyne had walked over with Olivia and Adelaide Marchbanks, and it was she who suggested it.

"Why don't you have regular practisings," said she, "and then a meeting, for this and the archery you wanted to get up, and games for a prize? They would do nicely together."

Olivia Marchbanks drew up a little. She had not meant to launch the project here. Everything need not begin at Westover all at once.

But Dakie Thayne broke in.

"Did you think of that?" said he. "It's a capital idea."

"Ideas are rather apt to be that," said Adelaide Marchbanks. "It is the carrying out, you see."

"Isn't it pretty nearly carried out already? It is only to organize what we are doing as it is."

"But the minute you _do_ organize! You don't know how difficult it is in a place like this. A dozen of us are not enough, and as soon as you go beyond, there gets to be too much of it. One doesn't know where to stop."