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Read Ebook: Nan Sherwood's Summer Holidays by Carr Annie Roe
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Ebook has 1151 lines and 46233 words, and 24 pages
were down in the village to find out about how much it would cost."
"Just a whole gang of people with a single idea," Rhoda laughed.
"And that idea is Nan!" Bess agreed. "Now let's get busy before she comes," she continued as she raised her arm to note the time. The watch had been a Christmas present and Bess was still self-conscious about it and very, very proud. "It's four-thirty," she said. "We'll all have to get ready for dinner shortly, and Nan will be here, if she isn't coming already," she added as she heard footsteps in the hall.
"Sounds like Mrs. Cupp," Laura whispered.
"It was," Bess breathed a sigh of relief. "No one else rustles like that."
"Good reason," Laura couldn't help adding. "No one else has a figure like that."
The girls giggled appreciatively.
"How will we organize this?" Bess appealed to Rhoda for help.
"Let's have committees," Grace answered the question.
"I'll take charge of food," Laura jumped in with a suggestion.
"Not if I have anything to do about it," Amelia contributed her bit.
"And I'd like to know why not!" Laura retorted.
"Simply because I was just down in the village with you and I know what kind of food we would get, if you did the buying, just one course after another of chocolate sodas with chocolate cream, and then you would top it all off with devil's food cake a la mode." With this, Amelia looked significantly at the spot on the front of Laura's skirt.
"Oh, darling, let's make peace," Laura capitulated, "or we will never accomplish anything at all this afternoon. I nominate Rhoda to have charge of the food. Do I hear a second?"
"I second the motion," Bess replied. "All in favor say 'Aye'."
There was a chorus of "Ayes".
"The motion is carried," Bess, the self-appointed chairman closed the question. "Now, who wants to take charge of the guest list?"
"Aren't we getting pretty high-hat with guest lists, and all?" Laura asked. "Just ask the people to come. There doesn't have to be any fuss about it."
"Oh, Laura, it's about time you grew up," Bess silenced her friend. "We're going to do this party up right. It's not going to be a secret midnight spread, though they are fun," and her eyes twinkled as she remembered the one down in the boathouse at which they had entertained Mrs. Cupp.
"Let's make this different than anything we have ever had before. Let's make it dignified and have everybody wear party dresses. Let's invite Dr. Beulah and Professor Krenner. Nan loves them both. I'm sure she would feel very proud, if they came."
"Bess, you will have to hire a hall," Grace rather timidly interposed. "How can we ever entertain all those people? They'll scare the life out of me. Just imagine going up to Dr. Beulah and saying, 'We are going to have a party, will you come to it?' What if she said, 'No!' Then what would the person who had asked her say? Why, it gives me gooseflesh just to think about it."
"Never you mind, little Gracie, you won't have to do the asking," Laura reassured her, "We'll let either Bess or Rhoda do that."
"That's an idea!" Amelia approved. "Rhoda already has a job. Bess, you make up a list of people you think we ought to invite and then you invite them. It seems to me, though, if you are going to do it in a grand manner, you really ought to write out the invitations, and that you will have to invite Mrs. Cupp."
The girls groaned.
"That's right." Amelia stuck to her point.
For a second Bess looked crestfallen, almost as though she had rather give up the party than have grim looking Mrs. Cupp present watching over it.
Laura, however, cheered her up. "Never mind, Bess," she consoled, "she's really not so bad, you know, after you have thawed her out with something warm to drink and given her something good to eat. Really, she can be quite human when she wants to be."
"At any rate, we don't have to think about Linda Riggs this time," Bess said in an effort to find one patch of brightness in the situation. "My, doesn't it seem good not to have her here this term!"
"Better than anything that has happened to us for a long time," Grace agreed. "But let's not crow too loud about it, you never know when she will turn up. Then you'll invite Mrs. Cupp, too?" she asked Bess, looking as though she was very glad she didn't have to do it.
"I suppose so," Bess agreed half heartedly. "How many will we invite?"
"I've been wondering about that, too," Rhoda spoke up. "And I can see no end to a list. Nan has so many friends that it is positively embarrassing! We can't possibly have a dinner, even if Dr. Beulah and Mrs. Cupp would let us. There just wouldn't be enough room."
"Nor enough money," Amelia added significantly.
"That's right," Laura stuck in her oar. "How are we going to get the money to pay for all of this."
The question fell on a quiet room. No one had thought of paying for it!
Finally, Bess broke in on the silence, "Maybe I could get my father to send me some extra money this month," she offered doubtfully. "I could write and ask him for two months' allowance at once. I think he would do it." Bess did have a way with her father and mother that usually secured for her what she wanted, for she was an only child and they loved her dearly. For this reason, she had no conception at all of the value of money. "You seem to think," Nan often told her, "that it is something you go out and pick off from bushes. Don't you know that people work for money?"
Now it was Amelia who put a damper on Bess's generous but thoughtless offer. "That wouldn't be fair at all," she rejected Bess's proposal.
"Why?" This from Bess.
"Because we are all giving the party, and we all want to help."
"Thata girl, Amelia," Laura applauded slangily.
"Why can't we," Rhoda began slowly as though she hadn't quite worked the idea out in her own mind yet, "make up a list of people that we know would like to do something for Nan--goodness knows, there's enough of them--and invite them asking each one to contribute fifty cents to help take care of expenses?"
"But we couldn't ask Dr. Beulah to give fifty cents!" Grace cried out without even thinking.
"Of course not!" Laura agreed. "But we could make out a list of extra special people whom we would invite as guests. They wouldn't pay anything at all."
"That's perfect!" Bess chimed in. "That takes care of everything. At fifty cents apiece, we will have some money left, and we can use that to buy Nan a going away present."
"And Laura and Amelia and I will be the committee to buy the gift," Grace added. "And let's have the party on a Sunday afternoon and just serve simple refreshments so that there will be lots of money left over!"
"Yes, we want to get something nice for Nan, something that she would never buy for herself and something that she will use all the time she is away, so that she will think of us often," Bess added rather sadly, for she wasn't quite reconciled yet to Nan's going away without her.
"Sh! I hear someone coming, and it's not a cat this time," Laura whispered in the silence that followed Bess's statement.
Bess jumped up. "Everybody get busy," she just had time to say, "so that this will be the very nicest party Lakeview Hall has ever seen," before Nan burst into the room on the conspirators.
DOUBT ON ALL SIDES
"Do you think she suspects?" Amelia asked Laura as the two walked down the corridor of the dormitory after working their way out of the confusion that followed Nan's breaking in on their secret meeting.
"She's pretty smart," Laura answered. "We'll never be sure but I think that Rhoda saved the day."
"The poise that girl has!" Amelia admired. "Every once in a while she does something with such grace and tact that you can just feel the generations of good breeding that are in back of her. She always knows what to say and when to say it. She's a girl in a million and so utterly unaware of it all too," she added half wistfully.
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