At Home with the Jardines Part 25

As for me, I was in a spasm of laughter which Jehu saw.

"I'm sorry, Mis' Jardine," he said, as the gentlemen released the sorrels' heads, and he prepared to drive off the steps, "but these horses pulls more than Guffin's mare, and I can't get a purchase on 'em with this bad hand of mine."

Then I knew who he was! He drove Guffin's grocery wagon for two months, and had lost three fingers of his right hand!

Poor Bee! But she took it out on me on the way home for not having had presentable servants before she came.

Now that she has gone, Amos is driving the sorrels again, and they are getting fat.

CHAPTER X

OUR FIRST HOUSE-PARTY

It was Bee who suggested giving one, but then Bee thought up so many things for us to do while she was staying with us!

She invited her friends, Sir Wemyss and Lady Lombard, to spend a week at Peach Orchard, and when they accepted she said, to soothe my fright at being asked to entertain such grand personages, that if I would invite other people and make a house-party, it would take much of the responsibility off my shoulders, as then the guests would entertain each other.

Then she mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie, Artie Beguelin and his wife, Cary Farquhar, and Captain Featherstone, which would make ten of us in all.

To those who did not know Jimmie, this would seem a small number for a house-party, but Jimmie in a house all by himself would seem to fill it to overflowing with people, but they would all be Jimmie.

As I knew how much solid satisfaction it would be to Mrs. Jimmie to be for a whole week in the same house with so famous a beauty as Lady Lombard, I acted on Bee's suggestion, and all my people said they would come.

Bee came gracefully down-stairs one morning before our guests came.

She held a letter in her hand.

"Coffee, Bee?" I asked.

"No, thank you. I had mine in bed."

She wrinkled her brow in perplexity.

"I don't know what to do about it," she murmured.

"About what?"

"Billy. He wants to see me so much, mother writes. She thinks I ought to come home immediately."

"Let's see," I said. "It's only eight months since you saw your child.

Isn't mother rather absurd?"

Bee lifted her eyes.

"Don't be nasty," she said. "You learned that tone from Aubrey."

Aubrey smiled pleasantly at our guest.

"I didn't!" I said, warmly. "I used to be quite nasty at times before I was married."

Bee showed her little white teeth in a smile.

"I'm glad to hear you admit it," she said, sweetly.

"If you would like to see Billy so much," said Aubrey, politely, "why not bring him on here?"

"Could you?" I cried, in delight. To think of having Billy! The lamb had never been in the country in his life, and he was wild over my letters about Peach Orchard.

"I can arrange it, if you like," Aubrey went on--mostly to me, for Billy's mother was silently thinking.

"Do have him, Bee!" I cried. "I won't let him get in your way. He needn't even sleep in your room. I'll have Norah put up a cot in the alcove of the rose room. She can sleep there, and dress him and everything. You won't be annoyed the least bit."

"Well," said Bee, with graceful reluctance, "if you are sure he won't be in your way, and if Aubrey's cousin will bring him, I see no reason why he mightn't come."

I almost squealed in my delight. It would certainly be worth while to see the child's eyes when he first saw the calves and little chickens.

I left both Aubrey and Bee at the table while I rushed up-stairs to see if the rose room would be just right for him. I made Aubrey promise to arrange everything by telegraph. Norah loved children, and entered into my plans with delight. Then I flew out to interview old Amos. He had told me only a few days before that the boys on the estate next ours wanted to sell their goats and goat carriages.

The days pa.s.sed rapidly in preparations, but of all my guests, t.i.tled or otherwise, it was Billy--my Billy--I wanted to see worst. In two days I got a letter.

"Dear Miss Tats," it ran, "I only write to say that I shall be glad to come. If I had not written you a long letter so soon ago, I would write more now. Tell mother to be sure to meet me at the station.

Don't let her forget that I shall arrive at four-sixteen. Your affectionate little nephew, Billy."

I wept tears of delight over this effusion, and "so soon ago" pa.s.sed into the Jardine vocabulary.

In looking back, I think I can safely say that if Bee had known what would happen at that house-party to shock her English friends, she would have preferred to discharge her obligations to them by a nice little Sunday afternoon at Coney Island or an evening in Chinatown.

But fortunately the English are a sensible race, and Sir Wemyss and his bride, perhaps because of the reasonable way the d.u.c.h.ess came around when she found her daughter bent upon marrying Sir Wemyss, were so good-humoured and so plainly determined to see naught but good in America and naught but fun in Americans that they took everything in good part.

Aubrey, Jimmie, and Sir Wemyss got on capitally from the start, for before they came Aubrey said:

"What shall I say to them at first--when they come aboard of us, and before I have got my sea legs on?"

"Why," said Jimmie, "that's dead easy. Say to Lady Mary, 'Let my wife give you some tea,' and to Sir Wemyss say, 'Old man, how would a whiskey and soda go?' and there you are right off the bat."

Aubrey said precisely these words, with the most satisfactory result, for over her third cup of tea I felt very friendly with the beautiful English woman, and after four whiskies the men were almost sociable.

To our delight, Sir Wemyss was enchanted with Peach Orchard. He visited the uttermost corners of it. He was charmed with the cows, admired their breed, almost raved over Jack, the bulldog, whose pedigree was nearly as long as that of Lady Mary, who was the daughter of a hundred earls. He gave me many hints about my fine poultry, and wrote that first night for a pair of his very finest buff cochins to be sent over from his place in England, which he had just inherited from his uncle. He showed us where the apple-trees needed pruning, and was so interested in my attempts at an old-fas.h.i.+oned garden, which Bee had hidden behind a tall hedge, that he went to fetch Lady Mary to look at it, and they both volunteered to send me some plants and shrubs from England, which they declared I needed to complete it.

Bee's face was a study during those few hours. She had honestly tried to have everything as English as possible for them, and had trained my poor servants almost to death, with instructions as to what they were to do during this week. They were outwardly obedient, but inwardly disrespectful, as I overheard Norah, the housemaid, say to the cook:

"Katie, oh, Katie! We're wor-rkin' for the Four Hundhred now!"

"How do you know we ar-re?" asked Katie.

"The ladies all shtrip fur dinner!"

Jimmie simply shrieked when I told him, but Bee failed to see anything in it but an excellent reason why Norah should be discharged. Poor Bee!