style="font-size:15px;"> ‘All right. Do you wish it to be original?’
‘Certainly not; we wish it to be good.’
‘But we only know one chorus, and that’s “My Witching Dinah Snow.”’
‘Never mind; either write new words to that tune or sing tra-la-la to it. Mr. Richard Winship, the Chair appoints you Committee on Menagerie, and suggests that as we have proclaimed a legal holiday, you give your animals the freedom of the city.’
‘Don’t know what freedom of er city means,’ said Dicky, who feared that he was being made the butt of ridicule.
‘Why, we want you to allow the captives to parade in the evening, with torch-lights and mottoes.’
‘All right!’ cried Dicky, kindling in an instant; ‘’n’ Luby, ’n’ the doat, ’n’ my horn’ toads, all e’cept the one that just gotted away in Laura’s bed; but may be she’ll find him to-night, so they’ll be all there.’
This was too much for the various committees, and Laura’s wild shriek was the signal for a hasty adjournment. A common danger restored peace to the assembly, and they sought the runaway in perfect harmony.
‘Well,’ said Jack, when quiet was restored, ‘I am going a little distance up the Pico Negro trail; there are some magnificent Spanish bayonets growing there, and if you’ll let me have Pancho, Uncle Doc, we can bring down four of them and lash them to each of the corners of Elsie’s tent,—they’ll keep fresh several days in water, you know.’
‘Take him, certainly,’ said Dr. Winship.
‘Do let me go with you!’ pleaded Laura, with enthusiasm. ‘I should like the walk so much.’
‘It’s pretty rough, Laura,’ objected Margery. ‘If you couldn’t endure our walk this morning, you would never get home alive from Pico Negro.’
‘Oh, that was in the heat of the day,’ she answered. ‘I feel equal to any amount of walking now, if Jack doesn’t mind taking me.’
‘Delighted, of course, Miss Laura. You’ll be willing to carry home one of the trees, I suppose, in return for the pleasure of my society?’
‘Snub him severely, Laura,’ cried Bell; ‘we never allow him to say such things unreproved.’
‘I think he is snubbed too much already,’ replied Laura, with a charming smile, ‘and I shall see how a course of encouragement will affect his behaviour.’
‘That will be what I long have sought,
And mourned because I found it not,’
sang Jack, nonchalantly.
‘Oh, Laura,’ remonstrated Bell, ‘think twice before you encourage him in his dreadful ways. We have studied him very carefully, and we know that the only way to live with him is to keep him in a sort of “pint pot” where we can hold the lid open just a little, and clap it down suddenly whenever he tries to spring out.’
‘Do not mind that young person, Miss Laura, but form your own impressions of my charming character. Excuse me, please, while I put on a celluloid collar, and make some few changes in my toilet necessary to a proper appearance in your distinguished company.’
‘I prefer you as you are,’ answered Laura, laughingly. ‘Let us start at once.’
‘Do you hear that, young person? She prefers me as I are! Now see what magic power her generosity has upon me!’ And he darted into the tent, from which he issued in a moment with his Derby hat, a manzanita cane, a pocket-handkerchief tied about his throat, and a flower pinned on his flannel camping-shirt—a most ridiculous figure, since nothing seems so out of place in the woods as any suggestion of city costumes or customs. Laura was in high good-humour, and looked exceedingly brilliant and pretty, as she always did when she was the central figure of any group or the bright particular star of any occasion.
‘Be home before dark,’ said Dr. Winship. ‘Pancho, keep a look-out for the pack-mule. Truth, one of the pack-mules has disappeared.’
‘So? Dumpling or Ditto?’
‘Ditto, curiously enough. His name should have led him not to set an example, but to follow one.’
Elsie came.
Perhaps you thought that this was going to be an exciting story, and that something would happen to keep her at the Tacitas ranch; but nothing did. Everything came to pass exactly as it was arranged, and Jack met his mother and sister at twelve o’clock some four miles from the camp, and escorted them to the gates.
‘Welcome’ had been painted on twenty different boards or bits of white cloth and paper, and nailed here and there on the trees that lined the rough wood-road; the strains of an orchestra, formed of a guitar, banjo, castanets, Chinese fiddle, and tin cans, greeted them from a distance, but were properly allowed to die away in silence when the guest neared the tents. Everything wore a new and smiling face, and Elsie never came more dangerously near being squeezed to death.
Elsie, in the prettiest of gingham dresses, and her cloud of golden hair braided in two funny little pugs to keep it out of the dust; Elsie, with a wide hat that shaded her face, already a little tanned and burned, no longer colourless; Elsie, with no lines of pain in her pretty forehead, and the hollow ring gone from her voice; Elsie, who jumped over the wheel of the wagon, and hugged her huggers with the strength of a young bear! It was too good to believe, and nobody did quite believe it for days.
At three o’clock the happiest party in the world assembled at the rough dining-table under the sycamore-trees.
Elsie beamed upon the feast from the high-backed manzanita chair, a faint colour in her cheeks, and starry prisms of light in a pair of eyes that had not sparkled for many a weary month. Hop Yet smiled a trifle himself, wore his cap with a red button on the top to wait upon the table, and ministered to the hungry people with more interest and alacrity than he had shown since he had been dragged from Santa Barbara, his Joss, and his nightly game of fantan. And such a dinner as he had prepared in honour of the occasion!—longer by four courses than usual, and each person was allowed two plates in the course of the meal.
BILL OF FARE FOR HER MAJESTY’S DINNER
| Quail Soup. | Crackers. |
| Chili Colorado. | |
| (Mutton stew, in Spanish style, with Chili peppers, tomatoes, and onions.) | |
| Cold Boiled Ham. | Fried Potatoes. |
| Apples and Onions stewed together. | |
| Ginger-snaps. | Pickles. |
| Peaches, Apricots, and Nectarines. | |
| California Nuts and Raisins. | Coffee. |
And last of all, a surprise of Bell’s, flapjacks, long teased for by the boys, and prepared and fried by her own hands while the merry party waited at table, to get them smoking hot.
