CHAPTER II
AMONG the first things I did in preparation for Elise's visit was to set the twins to work on the lawn, and Ruthie to clearing up a rubbishly-looking place back of the barn where there was a pile of old boxes and barrel hoops.
I myself harnessed up Dixie, made a trip to the country, and brought back three bushel-baskets full of rock ferns from the woods. Juliet Adams helped me fill the iron urns the next day. I know very well that red geraniums, hanging vines, and a little palm in the centre are the correct plants for urns (there's a painting of one on the garden scenery at our theatre here in Hilton) but as geraniums are a dollar and a quarter a dozen, and the urns are perfectly enormous, I knew that such luxuries could not be afforded. I also knew that it was out of the question to work the fountain. I cleared out its collection of leaves, soused it well with the hose, and was obliged to leave it in the middle of the walk, out of commission, but at least clean. The tennis-court, which hadn't been used for tennis for ten years, had now passed even the potato-patch era and was a perfect mass of weeds. I paid the twins five cents each for mowing it twice, and then set out the croquet set with a string. I put a fresh coat of white paint on the wickets, and though the ground was far too uneven for any practical use, the general effect at a distance was not bad at all.
I spent two solid afternoons in the stable sweeping and cleaning as if my life depended on it. We don't keep a man now. Dixie is the only horse we own, and Alec does all the feeding and rubbing-down that Dixie gets. Poor little Dixie, rattling around in one of the big box stalls, can't give the place the proper air. It's a stunning stable—stalls for eight horses and a big room filled with all sorts of carriages. They are dreadfully out of style now (I used to play house in them when I was ten and they had begun their dust gathering even then), but Father says they were the best that could be bought in their day. I pinned the white sheets that cover them down around their bodies as closely as I could, so that Miss Parmenter couldn't see how out-of-date the dear old arks were. I cleaned up all the harnesses and hung them up, black and shining, on the wooden pegs. In an old sleigh upstairs I discovered a girl's saddle, which I dusted and hung up in plain view by the whip-rack; there's something so sporty about horseback riding! I was bound to have Miss Parmenter know that at one time we were prosperous.
But most of my efforts of course went into the house. It was terribly discouraging. We own loads of black walnut, and though I begged and begged for a brass bed for the guest-room, Father was adamant. He had allowed me to have the room repapered and that, he said, was all that I must ask for. The new paper really was lovely. I picked it out myself, pink roses on a light blue ground and a plate-rail half-way up.
I spent a lot of pains on the guest-room, carrying out the pink and blue colour-scheme in every possible detail. I took the light blue rose bowl off the mantel in the sitting-room and put it on the bureau, for hatpins. I rehung my "Yard of Pink Roses" over the guest-room mantel. My blue kimono I had freshly laundered and hung it up in the closet. A pair of pink bedroom slippers were carefully placed beneath. I found a book in the library bound in pink, entitled "Baby Thoughts," and put it on the marble-topped guest-room table alongside a magazine and my work-basket on which I had sewed a huge blue bow and inside of which I had placed my solid gold thimble. I also tied a smashing pink and blue rosette on the waste-basket; and the half-dozen coat-hangers which I was able to scare up out of Alec's and Father's closets Ruthie wound with pink and blue ribbons. I didn't neglect the more necessary details either. I paid thirty-five cents for a cake of pink French soap; and the only embroidered towels we own I strung along in a showy row on the back of the commode. In the tooth-brush holder I placed a sealed Prophylactic tooth-brush, which I read in the Perfect Housekeeper should be found in every nicely appointed guest-room; nor did I overlook the Bible, and candle and matches by the bed. The Perfect Housekeeper says that it is the little touches in your home, such as a fresh bunch of flowers on the shelf in your guest-room, or in cold weather a hot-water bag between the sheets, that count with a guest. I was dreadfully sorry that it was too warm for hot-water bottles.
I was in perfect despair about Nellie. Nellie is our second-girl and has been with us for years. Nellie doesn't look a bit like a servant. She has grey hair and wears glasses. People are always mistaking her for an aunt. I wrote out a set of rules for Nellie, tacked them up over the sink in the butler's pantry, and told her to study them during the week before Tom and Elise were due to arrive. Here's a copy of them:
Rule 1 When a meal is ready don't stand at the foot of the stairs and holler "Dinner!" Come to me and say in a low, well modulated voice, "Dinner is served, Miss Lucy."
Rule 2 Be sure and call me Miss Lucy, and Tom, Mister Tom. Never plain Tom or plain Lucy. And so on through the family.
Rule 3 When I ring the bell during a meal, don't just stick your head in through the swinging-door but enter all-over and find out what is wanted.
Rule 4 Don't offer a last biscuit or piece of cake and say, "There's more in the kitchen."
Rule 5 If any member of the family asks for any other member of the family, don't say, "They're in the barn, or down-cellar, or upstairs," but go quietly and find them yourself.
Rule 6 Be sure and put ice-water every night into Mrs. Vars' bedroom when you turn down the bed.
Rule 7 If you get the hiccups when waiting on the table, withdraw to the kitchen immediately and take ten swallows of water.
Nellie is a good-natured old soul. I can manage her beautifully, but it took a head to do anything with Delia. Delia was the cook. I was in the butler's pantry the day before Tom and Elise arrived, putting away the family napkin-rings (for of course I know napkin-rings are tabooed) when it occurred to me that we had got to have clean napkins for every meal as long as Elise stayed. If she was with us a week that would make a hundred and sixty-eight napkins in all, counting three meals a day and eight people at the table. We owned just four dozen napkins and that meant—I figured it all out on a piece of paper—that the whole four dozen would have to be washed every other day. I went out into the kitchen and explained it to Delia just as nicely and sweetly as I could. She went off on a regular tangent. It was enough, she said, all the extra style I was planning on, without piling on a week's washing for every other day. She said she'd never heard of such tommyrot, and if a napkin was clean enough for Tom and Tom's family, she guessed it was clean enough for Tom's wife, whoever she was. I was simply incensed!
"We won't discuss it," I said with much dignity. "Not another word, please, Delia," and I left the kitchen.
I heard her slam a kettle into the iron sink, and mutter something about "another place," so I thought it better policy not to press my point. I hate being imposed upon—there isn't a teacher at the high school who can talk Lucy Vars into a hole—but I wasn't going to cut off my own nose. So I went straight to the telephone, called up a dry goods store and ordered ten dozen medium-priced napkins to be sent up special. All the rest of the afternoon I sat at the sewing-machine hemming like mad, and Nellie folded the things so that the machine stitches wouldn't show. I knew that napkins should be hemmed by hand.
Tom and Elise were due at eight o'clock on a Wednesday night. I had it planned that Father and Alec would meet them at the station and I would remain at the house to greet them as they came in. I wished awfully that we had a coachman and some decent horses, but I begged Father to hire a carriage and he promised that he would. The suspense while I waited for them to drive up over the hill was as awful as when I've been sent for by the principal at the high school—kind of thrilly inside and as nervous as a cat. I walked from room to room like a caged animal, trying to imagine how the old house would look to a person who hadn't lived in it forever. I lit the open fire in the hall, arranged the books on the sitting-room table for the hundredth time, and watched the piano-lamp like a hawk. It smokes the ceilings if you leave it alone.
The twins, Oliver and Malcolm, stationed themselves in the parlour to keep watch of the road. About half-past eight Oliver hollered out,