Chapter Seven

Waiting

Like any girl or boy in the world knows, it is not very pleasant to wait unless you have something to amuse yourself. They thought hard about the matter, their heads hurt from thinking, but they dare not complain to their pleasant elderly 15-year-olds, Sylvia and Lee, who were sweet as everything in the bazaar that was good, charming as new blown silver, pink roses with hearts, sweeter than Venus herself to Ben and Lisette. Anne was lovely as a white rosebud half opened but never took the place of their charming elders, so they did as their elders asked, and doing their thinking was their wish. But as I have not told you before, Lisette was the smartest thinker in the group, so one day she came up with a marvelous idea. “Let’s hide behind his tree house. When he comes down we can follow him disguised as grass and leaves,” she said one gloomy evening when everybody had almost given up and gone to bed. “Splendid idea, Lisette,” they cried. Ben, who was better than everyone in the art of clothing and costumes, made five lovely little suits embroidered with careful stitches with real leaves sewn on with dyed string, and grass and dandelions, buttercups, tansy, wild aster, pansy, and wild rose. So that night in their suits they waited and waited on the wildflowers, waiting for the Red Romer, their hair in net-like caps that Sylvia and Lee had made.