"My dear young ladies:
"I am a neighbor of Mr. Prendergast," (this was the dressed-up name
of Mollie's Uncle John) "and he axed me to get your dinner ready fer
you. I tried to keep it hot but you wus so long comin' I had to go
home to get dinner fer my old man. Hope things is all right.
"Lizzie Davis."
"So she is the one who has done all this," said Betty, looking around at
the good things with dancing eyes. "I bet she is nice and plump and has
rosy cheeks."
"Lizzie Davis? Lizzie Davis?" repeated Mollie, bringing the steaming gravy
back and plumping the dish triumphantly down on the table. "Rather a funny
name for a fairy godmother, but she sure does know how to cook. Don't
forget the potatoes, Grace. Come on, girls--let's sit down."
So down the girls sat and acted like ravenous pigs--or so Grace described
their conduct afterward. Mrs. Irving set to work carving the delicious
pork, but they could not wait for her.
They seized slices of bread, spread apple sauce and butter on them, and
ate like what they were, four famished girls and one equally famished
chaperon who had been out in the open all day and had had nothing to eat
since morning.
It was some time before they showed any considerable signs of slowing up.
Then Grace put down her fork, leaned back lazily, and called for dessert.
The latter was a huge cherry pie, and before the girls were through with
it there was not enough left to color a robin's egg.
After the pangs of hunger had been satisfied they found to their great
surprise that they were dead tired and sleepy.
"We will get the dishes out of the way and then Mollie can show us where
we sleep," said Betty. "Oh, girls, did you ever in your life taste such a
dinner?"
It was not till the dishes had all been cleared away and Mollie took up
her candle to show them their quarters that the unwelcome thought of the
thing that had so frightened them again crept terrifyingly into their
minds. Try as they would to forget it, they could not.
There were three small sleeping rooms in the lodge, but, small as they
were, they were comfortable and contained beds that seemed the height of
luxury to the tired girls.
Because of the indistinct and flickering candle light the girls could make
out very little of what the rooms really looked like, and they postponed
any close examination until the morning. Back of the lodge was a shed for
the cars.
The bedrooms were all joined by doors, which gave the girls a safe and
sociable feeling. Mrs. Irving, of course, had one room to herself, Betty
and Mollie slept together and Grace and Amy paired off.
They wasted little time in getting ready--Betty and Mollie had appointed
themselves a committee of two to bring in the grips from Mollie's car--and
before long they tasted the exquisite restfulness of comfortable beds
after a long nerve-trying day in the out-of-doors.
"I don't believe I shall close my eyes all night," said Amy with
conviction. "I'm too horribly nervous."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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