قراءة كتاب Six Girls and the Tea Room
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href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@48389@[email protected]#XV" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">"'MONGST THE HILLS OF SOMERSET, WISHT I WAS A-ROAMIN' YET!"
ILLUSTRATIONS
SIX GIRLS AND THE TEA ROOM
CHAPTER I
THE PATTY-PANS AGAIN
"Is this the Patty-Pans?" asked Gretta, setting down the basket that held Jeunesse Dorée, the yellow kitten, and looking around the little dining-room with great interest. And she asked it with her voice up on "Patty," and down on "Pans," because she was a true Pennsylvania country girl.
"This is our city residence, Patty-Pans-on-the-Hudson," said Happie Scollard. "Isn't it beautifully queer, the way we're glad to see anything again? We all were in the dolefullest dumps going to Crestville last April, then we felt dumpy coming away this morning because we'd got so attached to the farm—and it was a risk taking Gretta away from home for the first time! And now we're all as glad to see our dear little Patty-Pan flat as if we hadn't loved the farm, and in the spring we'll be perfectly crazy to see the farm again—and so it goes! Sorry to leave one thing, and just jumping glad to see another!"
Miss Keren-happuch Bradbury, the Scollards' adopted aunt whose unlikely name Happie bore, laughed. "Your 'jumping gladness' is always more in evidence than your regrets, Happie," she said. "Now, my annexed family, I am going home. You can get on without me in your own domain, and I want to see what has happened in mine during these long months of our exile. Margery, Happie, I will come down to-morrow and take you to see the room that I thought would answer for your proposed tea room. There's the bell! Bob and Laura with supplies from the delicatessen shop, likely. Charlotte, go to bed early and rest well to prepare for to-morrow, if you want to resume responsibility. Good-bye, my dears. I wonder how Noah liked parting from his animals!"
She started down the tiny three-foot hall in her brisk way, but Happie rushed after her and threw herself upon this "Noah" into whose Ark of refuge the Scollards had been taken the previous spring. Then the waters of affliction had threatened to submerge them, and their brave little "Charlotte-mother" was in danger of slipping away altogether, broken down by her long struggle to support her six children, as well as to educate them herself.
The Scollards had dubbed Miss Keren-happuch's farm "the Ark," with good reason, for it had preserved them, and their dearest of mothers had come back from it fit to take up her burden again. To be sure, during the nine months they had spent in Crestville the farm had proved to belong rightfully to Gretta Engel, the young girl with whom Happie had made such fast friends and who had now returned with them to share the experiences of a winter that promised to be interesting, but this did not alter nor lessen the Scollards' debt to that fine old gentlewoman, their grandmother's eccentric friend, Miss Keren-happuch Bradbury. She had been indeed their "Noah" who had saved them from destruction, and Happie ran after her at her hint of regret in leaving them, precipitating herself upon her in such wise that it was evident she had lost every bit of her former fear of her name donor. It was lucky that the little hall was but three feet wide, for Miss Keren staggered under the onslaught, though she kissed Happie's glowing cheek as heartily as the girl kissed her pale one.
"I know how the animals felt when they saw Noah walking off, dearest Auntie Keren!" she cried. "They felt like bleating, and as if Shem and Ham and Japhet, and all their wives couldn't console them if Noah hadn't promised to come often to see that they were fed, and to pat their heads and let them lick his hand! You dearest of Auntie Kerens!"
"I hope the original Noah didn't have the bear as spokesman for the rest of the animals!" gasped Miss Keren. "Happie, you are smothering me. There, my dear, let me go! I hear Bob whistling up the stairs, and Laura begging him to go slower. Gretta owns the Ark now. Go and hug her!"
Pretty Margery came out of a room farther down the hall and opened the door to let Miss Keren out and to let in Bob, the one Scollard boy, and Laura, the third girl. She kissed Miss Keren with her gentle, sweet manner, conveying silently her sense of the blessed difference between the circumstances of their return to the flat which Happie had dubbed "the Patty-Pans" and those under which they had closed that front door behind them in the spring to go to Crestville, and her realization that the Scollards owed this betterment to Miss Keren.
Bob and Laura came in with arms filled with packages, most of which had to be carried so perfectly right side up that Laura's face was one pucker of solicitude.
Penny—Penelope, the baby,—had been vainly trying to unfasten the