And all
the small cakes, too, and all the sugar things that was stuck on the
big cakes.--Has anybody counted the spoons? Some of 'em got swallered,
perhaps. I hope they was plated ones, if they did!"
The failure of the morning's orange-crop and the deficit in other
expected residual delicacies were not very difficult to account for. In
many of the two-story Rockland families, and in those favored
households of the neighboring villages whose members had been invited
to the great party, there was a very general excitement among the
younger people on the morning after the great event. "Did y' bring home
somethin' from the party? What is it? What is it? Is it frut-cake? Is
it nuts and oranges and apples? Give me some! Give _me_ some!" Such a
concert of treble voices uttering accents like these had not been heard
since the great Temperance Festival with the celebrated "colation" in
the open air under the trees of the Parnassian Grove,--as the place was
christened by the young ladies of the Institute. The cry of the
children was not in vain. From the pockets of demure fathers, from the
bags of sharp-eyed spinsters, from the folded handkerchiefs of
light-fingered sisters, from the tall hats of sly-winking brothers,
there was a resurrection of the missing oranges and cakes and
sugar-things in many a rejoicing family-circle, enough to astonish the
most hardened "caterer" that ever contracted to feed a thousand people
under canvas.
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