"Caroline!" exclaimed Lee, in perfect agony, as he beheld the lady of
his ardent, though long-restrained, affections poised across the wheel
of the wagon tugging at the middle of a heavy plank which Mrs. Dodd and
I were pushing up to her, while Mamie, the mother of seven, stood firmly
on top of the wagon guiding it into place.
"Help!" gasped Polk, as he started to take the ax from Jane by force.
Then we all stopped while Jane quietly gurgled the molasses of the
situation to them, and sent them on down the street sadder and wiser
men. I thought Polk was going to cry on her shoulder before he was
finally persuaded to go and leave us to our fate, and the expression on
Lee's face as he looked up at torn, dirty, perspiring Caroline, with a
smudge on her nose and blood on her hand from an absolutely
insignificant scratch, was such as ought to have been on Ned's face as
he ought to have been standing by Mamie with the asafetida bottle.
That's mixed up but the Five ought to catch the point.
It took up all of Saturday afternoon and part of Monday morning, but we
built those tables, thereby disciplining masculine Glendale with a
severity that I didn't think could have been in us.
We all rested on Sunday, that is, ostensibly. Jane put down all sorts of
things on paper that everybody had to do on Monday and on Tuesday.
Henrietta sat by her in a state of trance and it did me good to see
Sallie out in the hammock at Widegables taking care of both the Kit and
the Pup, laboriously assisted by panting Aunt Dilsie, because Jane
explained to her so beautifully that she needed a lot of Henrietta's
time, that Sallie acquiesced with good-natured bewilderment.
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