Of course the girls looked out of the windows, and they saw Rosie and some of the boys bringing piles of plates and cups from Aunt Molly’s; but as that lady herself did not appear, they guessed she, too, had been forbidden to assist.
After an hour or more of impatient excitement on the part of the girls, Rosie came up to them, broadly smiling.
“The young gintlemin bid me say that dinner is about to be served, and w’u’d yez please come down to the parlor.”
So the girls trooped down, and found Uncle Ned and Aunt Molly awaiting them.
Then the boys appeared, and, with obsequious demonstrations of greeting and compliment, they invited their guests to the dining-room.
The boys all wore aprons, having confiscated, with Rosie’s help, all those belonging to the club.
Big Tom Burleigh looked especially funny in a lacy, frilly little affair of Jessie’s, and as there had not been quite enough to go round, Harry Bond had made a big pinafore of newspapers. Then some of the boys had found time to make cooks’ paper caps for them all, and, with paper roses left from the night before in their buttonholes, their appearance was festive indeed.
The dining-room was a sight to behold. They had discarded the regular dining-table, and built a long narrow one of the boards of the dismantled stage. This table, whose length was such that it required three table-cloths, was decorated with great bowls of paper roses; and the whole room was decked with green branches, palms, and paper flowers, all of which had done duty as the garden in the play.
The twenty people seated themselves at the long and festive board, Uncle Ned and Aunt Molly, of course, being invited to sit at the head and foot; and then Rosie began to serve the feast.
But one waitress was far from being enough for that hungry crowd, so the be-aproned boys took turns in playing waiter.
The first course was clam chowder, of which the Burleigh boys were justly famed concocters. It was wonderfully good, and as they had made a great kettleful, there was enough and to spare.
Next was a course of broiled lobster. Although the boys pretended at first that they had cooked these, they afterward confessed that they had ordered them sent over from the Inn. But their guests cared not a jot where the lobsters had met their fiery fate, and pronounced them the most delicious ever tasted.