Chance of a Lifetime (16 page)

It seemed that the little group who loved her could scarcely bear to break up that night, so sweet it was to sit and look at the dear girl and be happy in her happiness, so hard it was going to be to have her gone, even for a short time.

But, at last, Alan got up with a sigh and declared he must go home.

And the next day was Thanksgiving.

S
herrill spent the early morning putting last things in her trunk. Her mother insisted that she was to have no part in the preparation of the dinner, for she would have enough else to do.

So the turkey had been stuffed the day before, and went into the oven in ample time to be ready at one o’clock. It was to be watched over by Grandma, who was too late to go to the Thanksgiving service. She said that no one else quite knew how to baste a turkey to the right brown anyway, and she enjoyed being left with the responsibility.

Keith took his mother and sister in his car to the church, and they sat in the old pew together, each of them thinking how it would be a long time before they sat there together again, and praying quietly for one another.

Sherrill wore her new coat for the first time. Keith had asked her to. He said he wanted to see how his sister looked in her “glad rags.” So Sherrill wore one of her new hats and her coat, and sat quite conscious of her raiment for a while, as the eyes of her friends sent glances of admiration her way.

Alan MacFarland, across the aisle, watched her furtively and was glad that she was also wearing his string of pearls. He was thinking how much he would like to be up in New York this winter and take Sherrill to symphony concerts and church, and all sorts of nice, interesting places. How proud he would be to take her somewhere in that coat. Perhaps he would in the spring, if spring ever came. She wouldn’t wear that coat to the barn dinner that evening, he was sure, if it were only just on account of Mary Morse.

He watched Keith take his mother and sister away home, and followed them with a wistful glance. Then he went dutifully home to his own family Thanksgiving dinner. For he had a family that was just as anxious to have him all to themselves as Sherrill’s family were to have her. But he consoled himself with the thought that, anyhow, he was to drive Sherrill up to the Evans’ barn late that afternoon to set the tables, and that later, when it grew dark, he would drive her down to the Flats after Mary Morse. Then he would sit beside her at the barn dinner, with Mary at her other side, and his dinner guest, Sam O’Reilly, on his other side. Later he would drive them all home, and perhaps stay a few minutes with Sherrill to say good-bye, for she was leaving early in the morning. Oh, it was going to be a large evening. Sherrill wasn’t gone yet!

The turkey was wonderful! Sherrill’s grandma knew how to cook turkey. She had stuffed it, too, with the old family recipe that nobody could quite imitate. Yet Sherrill somehow could not eat. It seemed to her that there were tears in her throat, where the food should go down, that hindered her from swallowing. She wanted to laugh and she wanted to cry, and she wished, oh how she wished, that she were going to stay home and enjoy all her lovely things with the people who loved her, instead of going off among strangers and try to satisfy people who would be always criticizing her and judging her by her clothes.

But then, Mother and Keith and Grandmother all felt the same way, of course, and everyone tried to be jolly and tender and make the time go pleasantly. By the time the pumpkin pie came, Sherrill was laughing with them and telling all the funny things she meant to say to her New York relatives when she arrived, although they all knew she would rather cut out her tongue than say any of them.

She even put on her new coat and stuck up her chin and stuck out a spineless little hand indifferently to a supposed Aunt Eloise, saying quite loftily, “Please ta meet ya, Auntie!”—and sent them all off in peals of laughter.

Suddenly, they looked up and Alan stood among them.

Oh! The time had gone! The Thanksgiving dinner was over. There would be no more family all together now until Sherrill got back from New York!

With a pang she jumped up and rushed around, helping her mother put away things and carry out dishes in spite of protest.

They all went to work and scrambled the dishes into the kitchen, the boys carrying out the things for the refrigerator and piling dishes in treacherous towers, helping to scrape up and put away, everybody laughing and talking. It was as if they were hanging on to the very last minutes when they could all be together. Her dear family—and Alan! How precious they all seemed to her as she looked up from the pantry drawer, where she had been picking out clean dish towels. Her eyes blurred with sudden tears and a great longing to throw off her journey even now at the last minute. Only of course she knew she could not do that now.

And then, in the midst of it all, came Harriet Masters, who had declined to eat Thanksgiving dinner with them, because a very old lady at the boardinghouse who had been taken suddenly ill had begged her to stay with her. But now the old lady was better, and asleep, and Hannah Maria, the second girl, for recompense, was sitting in the hall to listen if she called, and Harriet had slipped away for a few minutes.

They got her a plate with some of Grandma’s pie, and while she ate they washed the dishes. At least, Sherrill washed them and Keith and Alan wiped them, while Mary Washburn put them away.

Alan watched Sherrill’s hands working swiftly, skillfully among the soap bubbles in the great dishpan, plunging the dishes in and out again, into the rinsing water and out on the drain board, another and another, how quickly she did it. How pretty her hands looked while she did it. How pretty her hands looked with the sparkle of the suds on the back.

They talked and laughed and kept cheerful as could be, yet all of them were feeling the coming separation, as if Sherrill were going around the world for an indefinite stay, instead of just running up to New York for perhaps only three months. How they all loved her! Ridiculous, of course, to feel it so, but it was the first break in the family since father had gone away when

Sherrill was a very little girl.

The dishes were all in shining rows on the shelf in a very short space of time, and Alan and Sherrill started out on their rounds.

“And haven’t you even told Willa and Rose that you are going away?” asked the boy when Sherrill was seated in his car on the way to the Evans’ barn.

“No, I haven’t,” said Sherrill, suddenly appalled at the task before her. “I somehow couldn’t before this came off. It would look like deserting after the first gun was shot. I don’t know but it is, only—well I can’t help it now. But I’d so much rather like to stay.”

“Well, you’d better not tell them till the end, then,” advised Alan. “It would just spoil the evening, and we want it to succeed you know.”

“Of course,” said Sherrill, “and it’s going to, I know. I prayed all during church service this morning for it.”

“Here, too,” said Alan shyly.

Two other cars were standing before the Evans’ barn door when they arrived, and a bevy of young people poured out to greet them, all talking at once.

“The ice cream hasn’t come yet, Sherrill,” called Willa Barrington. “What time did your brother say it would be here? Hadn’t I better send my brother down to ask about it? You know you can’t always depend on things on holidays, and it wouldn’t do to have to run after it at the last minute.”

“It doesn’t come till the five o’clock train, Willa! It’s special, and Holly Beach is bringing it up as soon as the train comes in. You needn’t worry a minute about it. Keith okayed it last night.”

“Sherrill, I can’t find the place cards. I thought you said you gave them to Willa, but she hasn’t seen them,” called Rose.

“Sherrill, can’t Alan go down and get Harvey to open up the store and give us some candles? We lack eight more, since those other Flatters have accepted.”

“Sherrill, didn’t you say Mrs. Foster said we could have some of her chrysanthemums? She didn’t send them!”

“Sherrill, do you know how to work this oven regulator? Mrs. Marker thinks the turkey is cooking too fast.”

“Sherrill, are you going to seat the girl guests on our right or our left?”

“Sherrill, how soon do you want the fire lit? Not more than a half hour before they arrive, do you? Say, can’t you get Keith to come up and help the men get that electric-light wire fixed over the tables?”

“Sherrill, Mrs. Marker wants to know who promised celery? She says she knows where we can get some more if you’ll ask.”

“Sherrill, did you intend to put electric bulbs in those pumpkin lanterns or real candles?”

“Sherrill, is the piano in the place you wanted it?”

“Sherrill, where are the forks? And can’t we use the same forks for pie?”

“Sherrill, how many cakes were promised? Didn’t you say twelve? Well, there are only eleven.”

It was a perfect bedlam. But Sherrill walked in as calm as a summer morning and had them all straightened out in no time.

“The place cards are in that white box over the first stall. Alan has a whole gross of candles in the car; he’ll get them. Can’t Dickie run down to Mrs. Foster’s and cut the chrysanthemums? He knows how, and she said she would be away and couldn’t. Here, I’ll set the regulator. Yes, the girls on the right. No, Sam, don’t light the fire yet. Yes, Rose, Keith is sending up a man from the company. He’ll be here in half an hour to fix the lights. The celery is wrapped in a wet towel over there, over in the corner on a beam. Candles in pumpkins, of course. It wouldn’t seem real without them. No, the piano must go over there by the speaker’s table so everybody can see the singers. I’ve brought the forks and the other cake! Of course, we’ll use the same forks.”

Alan stood back and watched her in admiration for an instant, then he set to work helping her, with all his wits. How was he ever to fill her place while she was gone?

They had thought that everything was ready for the dinner the day before, except just setting the tables and cooking the food. But now it seemed as if everything was left until the last minute, and it took every second of hard work before they felt that all was as it should be, and the various members could take time to rush after their invited guests.

Alan and Sherrill were the last to leave the barn. Only the two women who had been hired to do the cooking were in the far stalls, busy over the two gas ranges that had been temporarily installed, and they were discussing in loud, cheerful tones the various ways of making turkey gravy.

Alan stood in front of the fireplace, watching Sherrill as she flitted from table to table, putting last touches to the flowers, scattering a few roses that someone had sent over on the tablecloth in front of the invited guests, a rose to a plate, changing the position of the butter plates and sugar bowls, making sure that the guests were placed exactly according to the chart that had been so carefully made out by the committee.

Then she stood back and looked, her head on one side, and turning with a smile came over to where Alan stood.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it, Alan?” she said with satisfaction.

“Why, guess so,” said Alan, taking a quick inclusive glance. “Yes, yes it is. I hadn’t been noticing.”

“You—hadn’t been noticing! Why, Alan! Aren’t you interested?

Don’t you think it’s wonderful?”

“Sure, I do,” said the boy heartily, “but I was looking at you. Say, that dress you have on is just the color of your eyes. Is that one of your new outfits?”

“Oh, Alan! You’re hopeless!” Sherrill laughed. “This is the old blue dress I’ve worn two winters. I’m wearing it tonight because I promised Mary Morse I would. She felt uncomfortable about coming where she thought everybody would wear an evening dress, so I told her I would wear what I had on.”

“Like you,” said Alan, studying her intently. “But it’s not the clothes you wear, it’s
you.
You look dressed up in anything.”

“Alan, I believe you’ve been kissing the Blarney Stone. I never knew you to be so flattering before,” said Sherrill, looking at him in astonishment. “Come on. It’s time to go after our guests. But I hate to leave here, it looks so pretty.”

“It certainly does,” said Alan with late enthusiasm. “Looks nice enough to live in, doesn’t it?”

“It does, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be fun to make over a barn into a perfectly beautiful house?”

He studied her face thoughtfully. “Would you like to live in it?”

“Of course I would. You could do wonderful things with some of these old barns. Take that one on the field next to our house now. Can’t you just think what wonderful porches and nooks and crannies and rooms on different levels could be made, with a great, wide staircase in the center, and a skylight in the top story, letting the sunlight in?”

“Hmm!” said Alan thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought about it, but maybe it would. You ought to study architecture.”

“I’d like to. Come, we must go. We’re supposed to be back here in half an hour, and we don’t want to be late twice in one afternoon. The others have all gone after their guests, and we mustn’t let them arrive ahead of the officers.”

Alan was thoughtful as he climbed into the car beside her and stepped on the gas. Sherrill turned her head and looked back.

“It’s going to be lovely. See, Dick Hazelton has come on his bicycle, and he’s going to light all the lanterns and touch off the fire, just as he sees the cars coming up the hill. It certainly will be cheerful when we get back.”

“It certainly will,” said Alan, looking down at her, “and you did it all. I’m afraid it’s bad policy, however, beginning the season with such a success. Just look what a flunk the rest are going to be with you gone.”

“Indeed they are not. You are going to make each one better than the last. Aunt Harriet has promised to help you with the next one, and she’s a wonder. She knows more new things to do to get people talking and acquainted. Wait till you see what she has to suggest. She’s been telling me, and you are to go over there tomorrow night and get the whole thing planned out, so you can get your committees to work at once.”