Page:Jean Webster--Much ado about Peter.djvu/192

184 and, with a sigh of relief, turned toward the kitchen. He felt that he had earned a fifteen-minutes' chat with Annie.

But fresh trouble awaited him. He found Mrs. Carter and Nora in anxious consultation. The ice-cream had not come; and the expressman, who had already met three trains, said that he could not deliver it now until morning.

Mrs. Carter pounced upon Peter.

"Is Miss Ethel through with you? Then drive to the station immediately and meet the six-twenty train. If it is n't on that, stop at Gunther's and tell them they will have to make me seven gallons of ice-cream before ten o'clock to-night. It's disgraceful! I shall never engage Perry to cater again. And tell the expressman that I consider him very disobliging," she threw after him.

An hour and a half later he dumped three kegs of ice and brine on the back veranda, and was turning away, cheered by the near hope of his