Chapter 8

Tom, Peter, Mary, Patty, and the twins stayed at Five Oaks until the first of September, then, plump, brown, and happy they returned to New York. With them went several articles of use and beauty which had hitherto belonged to Five Oaks. Mrs. Kendall, greatly relieved at Margaret’s somewhat surprising willingness to let the visitors go, had finally consented to Margaret’s proposition that the children be allowed to select something they specially liked to take back with them. In giving this consent, Mrs. Kendall had made only such reservation as would insure that certain valuable (and not easily duplicated) treasures of her own should remain undisturbed.

She smiled afterward at her fears. Tom selected an old bugle from the attic, and Peter a scabbard that had lost its sword. Mary chose a string of blue beads that Margaret sometimes wore, and Clarabella a pink sash that she found in a trunk. Patty, before telling her choice, asked timidly what would happen if it was “too big ter be tooked in yer hands.” Upon being assured that it would be sent, if it could not be carried, she unhesitatingly chose the biggest easy-chair the house afforded, with the announcement that it was “a Christmas present fur Mis’ Whalen.”

For a moment Mrs. Kendall had felt tempted to remonstrate, and to ask Patty if she realized just how a green satin-damask Turkish chair would look in Mrs. Whalen’s basement kitchen; but after one glance at Patty’s radiant face, she had changed her mind, and had merely said:

“Very well, dear. It shall be sent the day you go.”

Arabella only, of all the six, delayed her choice until the final minute. Even on that last morning she was hesitating between a marble statuette and a harmonica. In the end she took neither, for she had spied a huge chocolate-frosted cake that the cook had just made; and it was that cake which finally went to the station carefully packed in a pasteboard box and triumphantly borne in Arabella’s arms.