Six Girls and Bob: A Story of Patty-Pans and Green Fields

"HOW can you get twelve feet into eight feet, no matter how good you are in arithmetic?" asked Happie Scollard, a trifle impatiently.

"You'd have to be pretty poor in arithmetic to try it. Even home-taught children ought to know something about putting greater into lesser," observed Bob. "Would you mind telling us what you're driving at, Keren-happuch, my dear?"

Happie groaned. "This room is quite squeedged enough with us six Scollards in it, without crowding in my dreadful name, Robert, my dear," she retorted. "What I was driving at was a harmless little humorous joke. This kitchen is eight feet wide, and we have twelve feet, we six, haven't we? I was wishing we had more space to stand on; that's all."

"That's right; always make humorous jokes," approved Bob. "I've heard lots of jokes that hadn't a touch of humor. Yours isn't so very--but never mind! You know we needn't put all the twelve feet into the eight. This room is nine feet long. What's the matter with putting a few of our feet down the length of it? Say seven of the twelve, for instance?"

Happie laughed. "I hadn't thought of dividing them that way," she said. "But the worst of standing any of your feet lengthwise of the room is that it brings some of you in between the range and the sink, and then I can't stir the fudge. Though to be sure if you all stand widthwise I can't get to the closet."

"How could you put seven one way and five the other? They'd have to go in twos, because we've each got two feet, don't you see?" asked Polly suddenly. She had been turning Bob's suggestion over in her mind and had announced her discovery with her usual serious manner. In all her nine years of life with her nonsense-loving elder brother and sisters, Polly had not learned that they were not always to be taken literally.

"Good for you, pretty Polly!" exclaimed Bob. "I believe you're right! And you know how many are left when you take seven from twelve, don't you? What's the matter with Happie? Isn't she all right?"

"This is a dear little kitchen, Happie. We all said so when we came to look at the flat! And we were so glad it was sunny!" said Margery, the sweet seventeen years-old sister who mothered the little band during their mother's daily absence.

"I'm still glad, sweet Peggy," said Happie. "But when we looked at the flat, we didn't realize how very tiny this kitchen was--we hadn't put the saucepans and things into the cupboard, you see! But I'm not breaking my vows. I'm still thankful that we have our funny, cozy little drawn-out fourth floor home. But it is a little kitchen for six, and everybody always packs into it when I make fudge."

"You ought to be flattered," said Bob. "How is it coming on this time?"

"Not as fast as usual; there isn't much pressure on the gas," replied Happie, lifting her pan to peer anxiously at the fragrant brown mass it held.

She was a pretty creature, not with a regular and easily defined prettiness, but with a charm of feature, coloring and expression that was more potent than orthodox beauty. She had brown hair, that in the shade looked the color of a ripe chestnut. In the sun it turned a splendid copper color, as if the chestnut had blazed up in the brazier. It was hair all crinkles and wrinkles, trying to curl as nature meant it to, and as its owner distinctly meant it not to curl. It waved around rosy cheeks in which the dimples came and went so fast that they looked as if they too were curly, like the hair, and it shaded brown eyes that could laugh and flash and cloud sorrowfully, but which ordinarily shone with a warm, steady light that put one in mind of a glowing hearth fire. Happie could not have had a more appropriate name than her nickname, for she was a veritable ray of sunshine, brave and cheerful and unselfish, good with that natural tendency to noble aims and thoughts that seems in rare natures to be at one with the tendency of flowers to clothe themselves in fragrance and beauty. She could get angry, and sometimes did, but she never could do unkind or mean things; she was a loyal, pure-hearted, clever little woman of fourteen, with so many talents that she had no special one, and her mother felt that when the time came for her to earn her bread, as all the Scollards must do, it might be hard to decide for what too-versatile Happie was best fitted.

Just now this sunny little maiden was bending absorbed over the gas range, her face decidedly red, her sweet lips deserving the epithet for purely external reasons, as well as for their pleasant curves, while her right hand stirred the mixture in a pan which her left hand slightly lifted above the circular blue flame.

Margery--Margaret--reclined against the drop shelf which was the space-economizing substitute for a kitchen table. She was a graceful young creature, with a serious look on her madonna-like face, brought there by her early acquaintance with responsibility and anxiety.

Bob, next to Margery in seniority, sat astride of the only chair the tiny kitchen admitted. A fine, square-shouldered specimen of a boy nearing sixteen he was; open-browed, bright-eyed, overflowing with fun, yet with a certain steadiness of manner that spoke him trustworthy, as became a boy who had been left the head of a family by his father's death four years before.

Laura, Happie's successor in the birth record of the family Bible, toyed elegantly with a fork, but cast rapid, furtive glances at the fudge, betraying the shallowness of the indifference which an over-weening sense of the dignity of her twelve years impelled her to assume. She was a pale, thin girl, with a discontented and sensitive mouth, and an abundance of foolish affectations that made her seem like an alien among the cheerful, sensible young Scollards.

Mary--Polly, as she was always called, was the most stolidly sensible little creature of the family. A round-faced, broad-browed, sweet-tempered, plump little body was Polly, never in anybody's way, always to be relied upon for an errand, very fond of housewifely tasks of which she assumed her full share in the household, though she boasted but nine years of age.

Penelope, baby Penny, ended the Scollard list, winding up the ranks at four years, an imaginative, lively little person, not prone to scrapes, but fond of mischief, and with an ability to amuse and to take care of herself remarkable, considering there were five older children ready and glad to spoil her with petting.

The sensitive, delicate mother of this flock had been left a widow when Penny was a wee baby. There had been nothing for her gifted, impractical husband to leave her but the memory of a perfect love and a beautiful life, spent rather in the pursuit of ideals than of money. Without a murmur this woman, strong of soul, though weak of body, had taken up the burden of her profound grief and the support of her children. She had many accomplishments, and her knowledge of languages stood her in good stead. Every day she journeyed down the subway from her fourth floor nest in an up-town apartment house, and earned her own and her children's bread as the foreign correspondent of a large firm, coming back weary every night during the hardest hours of the crowded subway travel to her flat, where, after the dinner which her children had prepared, she spent each evening giving them the lessons for which she could no longer afford teachers. It was not strange that the Scollards worshiped their mother with the love she so richly deserved, the love of recognition of a noble woman, as well as the natural love of children for their mother.

Happie's fudge boiled up suddenly, and suddenly Laura spoke, breaking a silence that had lasted for several minutes.

"I think I should like to be called Laure," she said.

"Law! What for?" cried Happie, promptly, blowing away vigorously on the spoonful of fudge which she had taken out to test.

"It's less common than Laura and more musical," said Laura pensively. "Laure sounds elegant."

"It sounds silly," said Polly instantly.

"It sounds as if you could put your finger through it anywhere; I don't like French names for American and English girls," added Happie.

"I like names that sound like beautiful music," said Laura, who really was talented musically, but who was pitiably conscious of the fact. "I was making up the loveliest little song--the sweetest air!--and I was writing the words too. I said:

'She shone afar, Like a golden star, My angel Laure.'

And then I had to stop, because it ought to have been Laura, and Laure wouldn't have rhymed. If only it was Laure now----"

"It wouldn't have rhymed, even if it had been," interrupted Happie, not too patiently. "Can't you hear that afar and star don't rhyme with Laure?"

"And what's the matter with writing songs and poems to some other girl beside yourself?" suggested Bob. "You might have said: 'My angel Bar,' for instance, and pretended the angel's name was Barbara. For goodness' sake, don't be a goose, Laura! You're nearly in your 'teens, as you so often remind us, and you ought to stop being so sentimental."

"You're not musical, Bob," said Laura, so pityingly, and with such an air of shedding light on the whole question that they all shouted.

"Fudge's done!" announced Happie triumphantly, giving a few last, furious beats to the mixture turning delightfully thick and sugary in the pan. "Bring on the pans, Polly, and, Bob, will you put it out on the fire escape till it gets cool enough to go on the ice without melting our entire stock? I've got to rest and cool my face."

Her lieutenants meekly obeyed, and Happie dropped on the chair which Bob vacated, fanning herself vigorously with a paper.

"I hope you haven't harmed your complexion, child," said Margery with her elder sisterly air, as she surveyed Happie's flaming cheeks.

"Fireproof!" Happie replied carelessly. "Sunproof and freckleproof too; you know I never burn or freckle as you do, Margery. That comes of having golden hair and peach blossom tints. I'm betwixt and between--coloring, age, height, cleverness, looks, everything, so I just slip through, and nothing touches me. I don't care! I like being fourteen and not having to think of skin or anything! I'd rather change places with Penny than with you, Peggy, but the worst of it is in three years I'll be as old as you are now."

"I like to feel that I am almost a young lady," said Margery placidly, surveying with entire satisfaction the hem of her dress resting on the floor as she leaned against the shelf. "I believe it is interesting to be grown-up. At least I ought to be of more use to motherkins then. And I should like to have a pretty house and entertain people beautifully, so they'd be perfectly happy visiting me." And pretty Margery sighed involuntarily, remembering the small flat which was her home, and which promised no gratification of her hospitable instincts.

"I shouldn't care for that," said Laura, taking up the theme with the readiness to discuss grown-up plans all little girls feel. "It doesn't mean much, just to entertain! What I should want would be to give people something better than dinners and visits. I mean to sing to people, my own songs, and play to them my own music and all the other composers'----"