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Page 60
She also became expert in that other fine art of condensing work, and
making it move in easy grooves. Her tea things she washed with her
breakfast things, just setting the cups and plates in the sink for the
night, pouring a dipper full of boiling water over them. There was no
silver to care for, no delicate glass or valuable china; the very
simplicity of apparatus made the house an easy one to keep. Clover was
kept busy, for simplify as you will, providing for the daily needs of two
persons does take time; but she liked her cares and rarely felt tired. The
elastic and vigorous air seemed to build up her forces from moment to
moment, and each day's fatigues were more than repaired by each night's
rest, which is the balance of true health in living.
Little pleasures came from time to time. Christmas Day they spent with
the Hopes, who from first to last proved the kindest and most helpful of
friends to them. The young men from the High Valley were there also, and
the day was brightly kept,--from the home letters by the early mail to the
grand merry-making and dance with which it wound up. Everybody had some
little present for everybody else. Mrs. Wade sent Clover a tall
india-rubber plant in a china pot, which made a spire of green in the
south window for the rest of the winter; and Clover had spent many odd
moments and stitches in the fabrication of a gorgeous Mexican-worked
sideboard cloth for the Hopes.
But of all Clover's offerings the one which pleased her most, as showing a
close observation of her needs, came from Geoff Templestowe. It was a
prosaic gift, being a wagon-load of pi�on wood for the fire; but the
gnarled, oddly twisted sticks were heaped high with pine boughs and long
trails of red-fruited kinnikinnick to serve as a Christmas dressing, and
somehow the gift gave Clover a peculiar pleasure.
"How dear of him!" she thought, lifting one of the big pi�on logs with a
gentle touch; "and how like him to think of it! I wonder what makes him so
different from other people. He never says fine flourishing things like
Thurber Wade, or abrupt, rather rude things like Clarence, or
inconsiderate things like Phil, or satirical, funny things like the
doctor; but he's always doing something kind. He's a little bit like papa,
I think; and yet I don't know. I wish Katy could have seen him."
Life at St. Helen's in the winter season is never dull; but the gayest
fortnight of all was when, late in January, the High Valley partners
deserted their duties and came in for a visit to the Hopes. All sorts of
small festivities had been saved for this special fortnight, and among the
rest, Clover and Phil gave a party.
"If you can squeeze into the dining-room, and if you can do with just
cream-toast for tea," she explained, "it would be such fun to have you
come. I can't give you anything to eat to speak of, because I haven't any
cook, you know; but you can all eat a great deal of dinner, and then you
won't starve."
Thurber Wade, the Hopes, Clarence, Geoff, Marian, and Alice made a party
of nine, and it was hard work indeed to squeeze so many into the tiny
dining-room of No. 13. The very difficulties, however, made it all the
jollier. Clover's cream-toast,--which she prepared before their eyes on
the blazer,--her little tarts made of crackers split, buttered, and
toasted brown with a spoonful of raspberry jam in each, and the big loaf
of hot ginger-bread to be eaten with thick cream from the High Valley,
were pronounced each in its way to be absolute perfection. Clarence and
Phil kindly volunteered to "shunt the dishes" into the kitchen after the
repast was concluded; and they gathered round the fire to play "twenty
questions" and "stage-coach," and all manner of what Clover called
"lead-pencil games,"--"crambo" and "criticism" and "anagrams" and
"consequences." There was immense laughter over some of these, as, for
instance, when Dr. Hope was reported as having met Mrs. Watson in the
North Cheyenne Canyon, and he said that knowledge is power; and she, that
when larks flew round ready roasted poor folks could stick a fork in; and
the consequence was that they eloped together to a Cannibal Island where
each suffered a process of disillusionation, and the world said it was the
natural result of osculation. This last sentence was Phil's, and I fear he
had peeped a little, or his context would not have been so apropos; but
altogether the "cream-toast swarry," as he called it, was a pronounced
success.
It was not long after this that a mysterious little cloud of difference
seemed to fall on Thurber Wade. He ceased to call at No. 13, or to bring
flowers from his mother; and by-and-by it was learned that he had started
for a visit to the East. No one knew what had caused these phenomena,
though some people may have suspected. Later it was announced that he was
in Chicago and very attentive to a pretty Miss Somebody whose father had
made a great deal of money in Standard oil. Poppy arched her brows and
made great amused eyes at Clover, trying to entangle her into admissions
as to this or that, and Clarence experimented in the same direction; but
Clover was innocently impervious to these efforts, and no one ever knew
what had happened between her and Thurber,--if, indeed, anything had
happened.
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