Page:An Old Fashioned Girl.djvu/180

164 "This will be a country supper, girls," said Polly, bustling about. "Here is real cream, brown bread, home-made cake, and honey from my own beehives. Mother fitted me out with such a supply, I'm glad to have a party, for I can't eat it all quick enough. Butter the toast, Maudie, and put that little cover over it. Tell me when the kettle boils, and don't step on Nicodemus, whatever you do."

"What a capital house-keeper you will make some day," said Fanny, as she watched Polly spread her table with a neatness and despatch which was pleasant to behold.

"Yes, it's good practice," laughed Polly, filling her tiny teapot, and taking her place behind the tray, with a matronly air, which was the best joke of the whole.

"This is the most delicious party I ever went to," observed Maud, with her mouth full of honey, when the feast was well under way. "I do wish I could have a nice room like this, and a cat and a bird that wouldn't eat each other up, and a dear little teakettle, and make just as much toast as I like."

Such a peal of laughter greeted Maud's pensive aspiration, that Miss Mills smiled over her solitary cup of tea, and little Nick burst into a perfect ecstacy of song, as he sat on the sugar-bowl helping himself.

"I don't care for the toast and the kettle, but I do envy you your good spirits, Polly," said Fanny, as the merriment subsided. "I'm so tired of everybody and everything, it seems sometimes as if I should die of ennui. Don't you ever feel so?"