Page:Carroll Rankin--Dandelion Cottage.djvu/229

 Rh  same pattern. There was a bewildering diversity, too, in the sizes and shapes of the cups and saucers, and an alarming variety in the matter of colours. But, as the girls had declared gleefully a dozen times or more, it would be possible to set the table for seven courses when the time should come for Mr. Black's and Mrs. Crane's dinner party, because so many of the things almost matched if they didn't quite. Jean was thinking of this, as she lifted the dishes from the shelf to the table, and lovingly arranged them in pairs, the pink sugar bowl beside the blue cream-pitcher, the yellow coffee cup beside the dull red Japanese tea cup, and the "Love-the-Giver" mug, beside the "For my Little Friend" oat-meal bowl. She had just taken down the big, dusty, cracked pitcher that matched nothing else, which, perhaps, was the reason that it had remained high on the shelf since the day Mabel had used it for her lemonade, when the door bell rang.