Chapter THIRTEEN: The Enchanted Palace Wakes

Any one would have thought, to hear the rapturous greetings, that the friends had been separated for months instead of days, for they chattered like magpies, as each one tried to tell everything that had happened since they had last been together.

“Miss Helen showed us the May-baskets at assembly this morning, and told us all about your adventure. What a dreadful time you had. Weren’t you terribly frightened? I know I would have been scared to death, for it was the worst storm I ever heard,” said Marion, settling down comfortably on the foot of the big bed and examining the story-quilt with interest. “The whole school is so interested, and no one talks about anything else but that and the May Frolic. Did you know that two miles down the road there was a regular baby cyclone, and a whole orchard was pulled up by the roots? The trees look as if a giant had flung them about, and it’s too bad, for they are covered with buds.”

“One farmhouse has fourteen panes of glass broken, and there’s not a flag-pole anywhere near that hasn’t been struck,” put in Alice eagerly, smoothing her blue gingham dress so that Boots could curl down in her lap for a doze. “The flag-pole at school is all in splinters, and I brought you a big piece as a souvenir of the storm. Gabriel climbed up the pole at recess and got a big piece that no one else could reach. He said he hoped you’d be at school soon, and if you wanted any more pieces of the flag-pole, just to let him know.”

“Well, it was very nice of Gabriel, but I really think this piece is enough,” said Wiggles hastily, viewing very doubtfully the huge chunk of wood that Alice produced, and privately wondering where she could keep it.

“I told him that if he sent any more, he might as well send you the whole flag-pole and be done with it,” giggled Marion.

“Gabriel is the boy that sits back of you at school, isn’t he, Woggsie?” asked Mrs. Eaton, much amused at the souvenir. “I remember meeting him down-town one day, and he gave you the turtle that you have in your aquarium.”

“Yes, he’s a nice boy, but just crazy over all kinds of squirmy things,” replied Jeannette with a look of distaste. “He brings the most wonderful wild flowers and rare mosses to school and knows just where they all grow. He knows all about mushrooms, too, and is fascinated by everything he sees in the woods or fields. I never saw such a boy. But he will carry around such _queer_ things in his pockets.”

“Why, he knows the greatest lot about all kinds of strange things that the teacher calls ‘wood-lore,’” continued Alice, patting Boots, who purred like a teakettle. “He can tell you all about butterflies, and birds, and ants. And I never saw such lovely odd flowers as he finds in the woods. Oh, that reminds me. Did you know that the old coffee-mill in the clearing was struck by lightning, too, and burned right down to the ground?”

Jet and Wiggles looked at each other with startled eyes. To think the coffee-mill, that had been their refuge, was gone. What if it had been struck while they were in it?

Mrs. Eaton shivered, and, to change the subject, for she saw how white the children grew when they heard this news, the basket-patterns were produced, and the lovely crêpe and tissue papers were exhibited to the interested girls.

Then Grandmother Carr brought scissors and paste, and, wrapping the invalids carefully in their bathrobes, she fixed them comfortably at the big sewing-table by the window, where all four friends tried their skill at making May-baskets.

“Gabriel says he is going to vote for Wiggles for Queen, and I am, too,” confided Alice, as she pasted pink petals to a basket she was making into a huge rosy chrysanthemum.

“Oh, Jet would be a much better Queen than I,” exclaimed Wiggles earnestly, smearing paste all over her hands in her excitement. “Why, I couldn’t be ‘haunty’ no matter how hard I tried.” She meant “haughty.” “Queens have to be just as proper as proper, and I never could be in the world.”

“The Queen in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ wasn’t proper,” protested Jet, cutting out daisy petals. “Don’t you remember how she yelled, ‘Off with their heads!’ all the while? What _are_ you making, Marion?”

Marion giggled as she held up her basket, shaped like a head of lettuce, to which she was just adding the last crinkly leaves.

“It’s a joke on Hugh,” she explained calmly, as she twisted the pale green leaves into shape. “Grandfather gave me the idea, so I thought I’d make the basket while I was here. I’m going to fill this head of lettuce with vegetables and hang it as a May-basket for him, with a funny rhyme, ’cause he was a mean thing and wouldn’t show me the basket I found out he was making for Jeannette. He’d be furious if he knew I told you, and he’ll be mad as hops when he sees this, ’cause he loves to call me ‘Carrots,’”--with a toss of her tawny mane--“but says his own hair is auburn.” She accented the last word with such a disdainful sniff that the other girls giggled.

“What is the rhyme?” asked Alice.

“I’m going to put a bunch of radishes, a turnip, and some beets inside, and this rhyme:

“‘Although your nose is turnip,
And your hair a radish Hugh (reddish hue),
Still lettuce send this token,
As our heart still beets for you.’”

“Won’t he be mad?” chuckled Polly Wiggles, “’specially about that ‘reddish hue.’”

“Grandfather helped me write it last night, and said it would be a good way to tease him back for all the jokes he makes about me. I could hardly wait until to-day to make the basket. This shade of green is just right for the lettuce, and doesn’t it look natural? If you’ll give me a hat-pin, I’ll help curl your chrysanthemum petals for you, Alice.”

“Here’s one on Grandma’s bureau,” said Wiggles. “What do you do with it?”

“You want to put each petal on the table and rub the head of the pin real hard against it. It gives it a crinkly look and curls the petal. I learned how when the Ladies’ Aid had a big tea, for they decorated with hundreds of yellow chrysanthemums, and I helped make them. The room looked beautiful.”

“I should think it would have been lovely. It’s a splendid idea, Marion,” enthused Jeannette, who found it worked beautifully with her second basket, a big red rose. “Don’t you like this daisy basket Wiggles and I just finished for Mother? I was so glad that she went downstairs, for it gave us a chance to make it. We’re going to make a lilac basket for Grandma next.”

“It certainly is pretty,” returned Alice, examining the dainty yellow-and-white basket with pleasure. “It was a good idea, making the basket itself a deep yellow, and then adding the big white petals. Won’t it be fun, on May morning, to scurry around and hang them on the door-knobs? Of course it won’t really be May Day, but the day of the frolic instead. I think it’s lots more exciting than Valentine’s day, and I do hope we’ll do it every year. Who do you suppose will be May Queen?”

“I think one of the older girls will get the most votes, don’t you?” asked Jeannette.

“You never can tell,” said Marion wisely.

“Jane Juggins is positive that she will be chosen, and gives herself as many airs and graces as if she had been crowned already. She makes me sick. She said this noon that she was the only real blonde in school, and that therefore she’d look best as Queen, and that she was going to have a real satin and chiffon dress with a _train_ if she was selected.”

“Well, I hope to goodness sake she won’t be,” broke in Alice decidedly. “Of course she is older, and mighty sure of herself, but I don’t think she’s so very popular.”

“Dear me,” said Wiggles, rumpling her curls, “won’t it be thrilling to have the names of King and Queen read out before the whole school, and then see them go up to the platform and select their attendants? I can just imagine how shivery and excited they will feel, can’t you?”

“I don’t care who is Queen, as long as Jane Juggins isn’t,” sniffed Marion. “She called after me this morning, ‘Well, Red-Head, you won’t have to worry about being Queen or Maid of Honor. Your hair’s so fiery it would set fire to the Maypole!’”

“The horrid creature!” snorted Wiggles wrathfully, “when every one thinks your hair is stunning, and lots prettier than that molasses-taffy color of hers. I wish I’d been there.”

Alice dropped her chrysanthemum and scissors, and opened her black-fringed blue eyes wide at the interesting news she was about to impart.

“What _do_ you s’pose?” she demanded breathlessly. “I have some news, and I almost forgot to tell you.” She paused impressively, with a true sense of the dramatic, and looked from one interested face to another.

“Yes, yes; go on,” they chorused eagerly.

“Well, White Birches has been opened, and the people are going to live there every summer. Their name is MacAllister and they have one son, and-- Oh, my goodness, girls,” with a squeal of excitement, “there he is now!”

Four eager faces leaned toward the windows as a handsome dark-eyed boy on a beautiful white pony, followed by a big white collie dog, dashed up the driveway of White Birches.

“Oh, oh, _oh_, that lovely pony,” sighed Wiggles rapturously. “Did you ever see such a darling in all your life? Isn’t it a picture under that arch of birch-trees, with that snowy dog capering along behind? Just look!”

May-baskets were forgotten as they watched the graceful lad race up and down the paths, followed by the excited dog.

“Maybe,” said Wiggles hopefully, with visions of riding on that entrancing pony in her mind,--“maybe he has a sister, about your age.”

“Well, maybe he hasn’t,” returned Alice disconsolately, “’cause Mother said that there was _one_ child, a son. Isn’t it a shame? They just came yesterday, and have lived abroad for several years.”

“If _only_ he had been a girl,” sighed Wiggles sadly. “What good times we all could have had together. We could have played dolls in those dear little rustic summer-houses----”

“And gone boating on Willow Lake,” put in Jeannette glumly.

“And ridden on that darling pony,” added Alice. “But boys are so--so----”

“Not ’xactly disgustable, but--well, uninteresting,” bemoaned Polly Wiggles with a toss of her black mop of curls. “Wouldn’t it have been gorgeous if he had been a twin?”

“I should say it would,” agreed Jet, looking very downhearted.

“With a beautiful dark-eyed sister named Jacqueline,” continued Wiggles dreamily. “You know we _always_ thought the ‘Enchanted Palace,’ as we called it, would belong to a dark-eyed Prince Charming, who would appear on a snow-white charger, and quaff three times from the water of Willow Lake, and the Palace would wake to life.”

“Well, there’s your dark-eyed Prince on his white charger. What more do you want?” demanded Alice calmly, motioning toward the lad on the white pony. “Goodness, you can’t complain when your fancies come true like that. I think it’s perfectly thrilling that your Prince appeared just as you pretended.”

“Don’t say ‘my Prince,’ as if he belonged to me. You all pretended about him, too. And he’s not a Prince anyway, he’s only an everyday boy,” sniffed Wiggles.

“Not exactly an _everyday_ boy,” disagreed Marion. “He’s not an everyday boy like my brother, Hugh, for instance,--any boy that owns a snow-white dog and pony, and has been abroad, and lives in such a gorgeous place!”

“And he certainly is dark-eyed, and he’s riding a white charger,” volunteered Jeannette, wide-eyed at the coincidence.

“That’s not a charger,--it’s a rather fat white pony,” Wiggles corrected, gazing critically at the good-looking lad. “Yes-s, I admit his eyes _are_ dark, I can see that from here. But he hasn’t taken a drink from Willow Lake, and he isn’t a really grown-up Prince----”

“Give him time, give him time,” murmured Alice absently. “Remember that a Prince can always grow up,--but he can’t grow down; and he’s older than we are, anyway. Oh, will you look!”

There was no need to ask them to look. Four pairs of eyes stared unwinkingly, for, as if Wiggles’ remark had been a signal, the boy, unconscious of the interest he was causing, had jumped from his pony and sauntered down to the edge of the lake. He was warm from his trot about the grounds, that was certain, for he shook back his thick chestnut-colored hair, and fanned himself vigorously with his handkerchief. Then, as the girls stood rigid with excitement, he stooped to the edge of the water, and, cupping his hands together, drank three times from Willow Lake.

As if indeed the dreamy spell that had hung over the place so long had been broken, a big limousine, driven by a colored chauffeur, rolled up the driveway, and the front door of the house opened to disclose a pleasant-faced lady, who hastened down the steps, and then paused to speak to a groom, who appeared to lead away the white pony.

“I’m ready, Donald,” she called, and the boy hurried toward her, gallantly assisting her into the car, and then bundling himself and the big collie in as well.

“His name is Donald MacAllister. Isn’t that an attractive name?” asked Alice approvingly, as the car disappeared down the road.

“He looks as if he were nice and full of fun,” added Marion, “but wasn’t it odd that the whole place _did_ come to life just as he drank from Willow Lake? I felt just as if I were looking at a play.”

“Every single thing turned out just as we pretended, except the sister,” declared Jeannette in an awed voice, “and we can’t expect everything. It’s just like a fairy-tale come true.”

“Well, I know one thing I can expect if I don’t skip for home,” laughed Marion with a glance at the clock. “Seems as if that clock must be telling fibs, but I don’t suppose it is. The afternoon has just flown, and it’s six o’clock already, and I’ll get a scolding if I don’t practise an hour.”

“Do tell us all about the Enchanted Palace,” pleaded Alice, gathering together her materials. “Maybe there is a fairy godmother to appear yet. And, talking about appearances, here comes----”

“Gruel,” put in Grandfather Carr mischievously, as he appeared with a dainty tray for two.