PAGE 6
The Freys’ Christmas Party
by
“And who are coming, dear?” she asked of Meg, as soon as she could trust her voice.
“All the roomers, Momsy, excepting the little hunchback lady and Madame Coraline.”
“Madame Coraline!” Mrs. Frey could not help exclaiming.
“Yes, Momsy. She accepted, and she even came, but she went back just now. She was dressed terribly fine–gold lace and green silk, but it was old and dowdy; and, Momsy, her cheeks were just as red! I was on the stepladder tackin’ up the Bethlehem picture, Sisty was standin’ on the high-chair hanging up the star, and Buddy’s arms were full of gray moss that he was wrappin’ round your chair. But we were just as polite to her as we could be, and asked her to take a seat. And we all thought she sat down; but she went, Momsy, and no one saw her go. Buddy says she’s a witch. She left that flower-pot of sweet-basil on the table. I s’pose she brought it for a present. Do you think that we’d better send for her to come back, Momsy?”
“No, daughter, I think not. No doubt she had her own reasons for going, and she may come back. And are the rest all coming?”
“Yes’m; but we had a time gettin’ Miss Guyosa to come. She says she’s a First Family, an’ she never mixes. But I told her so were we, and we mixed. And then I said that if she’d come she could sit at one end o’ the table and carve the ham, while you’d do the turkey. But she says Buddy ought to do the turkey. But she’s comin’. And, Momsy, the turkey is a perfect beauty. We put pecans in him. Miss Guyosa gave us the receipt and the nuts, too. Her cousin sent ’em to her from his plantation. And did you notice the paper roses in the moss festoons, Momsy? She made those. She has helped us fix up a lot. She made all the Easter flowers on St. Joseph’s altar at the Cathedral, too, and–“
A rap at the door announcing a first guest sent the little cook bounding to the kitchen, while Ethel rushed into her mother’s room, her mouth full of pins and her sash on her arm.
She had dressed the three little ones a half-hour ago; and Conrad, who had also made an early toilet, declared that they had all three walked round the dinner table thirty-nine times since their appearance in the “dining-room.” When he advanced to do the honors, the small procession toddling single file behind him, somehow it had not occurred to him that he might encounter Miss Penny, the canary lady, standing in a dainty old dress of yellow silk just outside the door, nor, worse still, that she should bear in her hands a tiny cage containing a pair of young canaries.
He said afterwards that “everything would have passed off all right if it hadn’t been for the twins.” Of course he had forgotten that he had himself been the first one to compare Miss Penny to a canary.
By the time the little black-eyed woman had flitted into the door, and in a chirpy, bird-like voice wished them a merry Christmas, Felix had stuffed his entire handkerchief into his mouth. Was it any wonder that Felicie and Dorothea, seeing this, did actually disgrace the whole party by convulsions of laughter?
They were soon restored to order, though, by the little yellow-gowned lady herself, for it took but half a minute to say that the birds were a present for the twins–“the two little ones who brought me the invitation.”
Such a present as this is no laughing matter, and, besides, the little Frey children were at heart polite. And so they had soon forgotten their mirth in their new joy.
And then other guests were presently coming in, and Mrs. Frey, looking startlingly fine and pretty in her fresh ruches and new tie, was saying pleasant things to everybody, while Ethel and Meg, tripping lightly in and out, brought in the dishes.