“Sure,” said Winona teasingly. “But come before my birthday. After that, I’ll be busy with my pony.”
“Pony!” cried Betsy in exasperation.
“Pony! Pony!” cried Tacy and Tib.
“Pony!” they all cried together.
“P-O-N-” began Winona but she stopped. She wasn’t sure whether she should say “Y” or “I-E.” Winona wasn’t very good at spelling.
“Winona!” called her mother sternly and started down the steps.
“I’m coming,” shouted Winona. “Ta ta,” she said over her shoulder to Betsy, Tacy, and Tib.
“Ta ta,” they answered, waving.
Winona was laughing but inside she felt determined.
“I have to, I just have to get a pony for my birthday,” she thought as she hurried up the walk.
3
Party Invitations
THAT EVENING Winona’s mother addressed the party invitations. Mr. Root had brought them home at supper time, elegantly printed on gold-edged pink cards. There were fifteen of them.
“For fifteen children! And Winona makes sixteen. Two children at the party for every year of her life,” Mrs. Root said, smiling. She was happy about the invitations. She hadn’t even mentioned Winona going riding on the bird bath. Maybe she had forgotten about it, Winona thought. She hoped so, on account of the pony.
Mrs. Root looked nice in her gray silk dress. The yoke and high boned collar were of gray lace over pink. Some of the pinkness seemed to have crept up into her soft pale cheeks. The skirt swirled out around her slender figure as she sat writing at the library desk.
This was really Mr. Root’s desk, and the library was really his room, but the family liked it. They often sat here in the evening.
There was a fire in the fireplace tonight. Toodles was stretched out in front of the dancing flames. Toodles loved the fire. You couldn’t persuade him to go for a walk after a fire had been lighted. He would cough or wheeze and pretend that he had a cold. Now he was sleeping, with his tongue hanging out—his tail uncurled, of course.
The library had tall shelves full of books. There was a red plush lounge with a bolster, and above it hung a gold-framed oil painting that Winona particularly liked. An artist had painted it down at her father’s office. It showed a table and upon it were a copy of the Deep Valley Sun, a half-smoked cigar, a violin and a mouse.
What, Winona always wondered, was a mouse doing there? And the violin was almost as mysterious. Her father couldn’t even play the violin. But the newspaper looked as though he had just put it down, and she could fairly smell that cigar.
He was smoking one now as he sat reading in his big leather chair.
Bessie and Myra were doing their homework beside the center table which had a gas lamp with a green glass shade. It was good to study by. There was a basket chair where Mrs. Root liked to sit and crochet, but tonight she was sitting in front of the desk.
She sat very straight, as she always did. Mrs. Root was sick a good deal, but she never acted sick. She never complained and always tried to do whatever she was supposed to.
“Win,” Winona’s father had said to her one day, “I know your mother expects you children to be perfect. And it’s hard on you sometimes. But don’t forget, Win, that first of all she tries to be perfect herself.”
Winona leaned on her mother’s chair and watched her address the party invitations.
One went to a little girl named Joyce. She and Winona had started to be friends because she came from a town named Winona, and Winona’s name was Winona, and they thought that was a joke. She was a fat, jolly girl with a fat braid of butter-colored hair.
Another invitation went to a boy named Percy. Mrs. Root liked him better than Winona did. Winona thought he was a sissy because he wore ruffled blouses. And he had curls—not merry, tousled curls like Dennie’s but neat, blond curls that used to be long. His father had insisted on cutting them, Mrs. Root had remarked one night at supper.
“Hooray for him!” Mr. Root had answered. Mr. Root liked Percy’s father. They went riding together.
“Do we have to have Percy?” Winona asked as her mother addressed his invitation in her graceful, precise handwriting.
“Certainly,” her mother replied. “He’s one of your best friends.”
Invitations went to every child in Winona’s Sunday School class, and the rest went mostly to children whose mothers were friends of Winona’s mother. Just as Mrs. Root finished the last invitation it dawned on Winona that there were lots more children she’d like to have invited.
“Mother,” she said, “I’d like to ask Dennie.”
“Dennie?” said her mother. “I don’t believe I know him.”
“He stopped to talk to me just this afternoon when I was sitting on the wall,” Winona said. “He had been kept after school.”
“Why?” asked her mother. “What for?”
“Oh…nothing much!” Winona was sorry she had mentioned it. “He just put something into a basket of erasers.”
“What was it?” her mother persisted.
“Oh…just a garter snake.”
“A garter snake!” Her mother jumped as though one had run up her silken skirt. Bessie and Myra squealed delightedly, and Mr. Root laughed out loud.
“It was a very little one,” Winona cried. “And garter snakes can’t hurt you. You know that; don’t you, Mother?”
“Never mind!” said her mother. “All our invitations are used up. See? Father had fifteen printed and we’ve addressed them all, so we couldn’t possibly invite anyone else.”
“Oh, dear!” Winona cried, for the more she thought about her party, the more she thought of people she would like to invite—the Syrian children, and Lottie and Lettie, and Betsy, Tacy, and Tib.
“Couldn’t Father…” she began, but her mother stood up. She shook the invitations into a neat pack between her slender fingers.
“Just fifteen,” she said firmly, smiling. “And every one is written. It’s bedtime, Winona.”
“Oh, dear!” Winona said again.
She kissed her mother, and she kissed Bessie and Myra. When she reached her father, she climbed into his lap. She put her black head on his shoulder, and he gave her a hug. It seemed like a good time to ask for a pony.
“Father,” she said, “I practiced my music lesson after school today.”
“Did you, Win?” he asked. He often called her Win because it was a boy’s name and he said she was the only boy he had.
“I practiced awfully good,” Winona said. “I think I can play pieces pretty soon. I’ll play them for you in the evening.”
“That will be nice,” he answered.
Winona snuggled down cozily. “Father, do you know what I want for my birthday?”
“Of course. You told me.”
“What?”
“A printing press, and a doll as big as a baby.”
“And a pony,” said Winona dreamily.
“A pony!” He spoke loudly in surprise. Mrs. Root, who had gone to her basket chair and picked up her crocheting, looked up quickly. Winona thought perhaps she had better tell her father what had happened that afternoon.
“I really need a pony,” she said, speaking fast. “I have to go pony-riding on the bird bath, and I get all wet, and it’s a wonder I don’t break it.”
“It certainly is,” he cut in.
“But that’s the only pony I’ve got,” said Winona. “The only pony whatsoever.”
Mrs. Root put down her crocheting. She looked at her husband earnestly.
“Horace,” she said. “About that bird bath incident! It made me see more clearly than ever that Winona must be trained to be more ladylike.”
“See here!” said Mr. Root, and he patted Winona’s hair. “Win is the only boy I’ve got.”
“But she isn’t a boy. She’s a girl and will soon be a young lady. And I want her to be quiet and gentle and modest like her sisters…”
Bessie and Myra looked up at Winona and
smiled. Myra almost winked, but of course she didn’t. She was going to marry a minister.
Her sisters liked Winona just as she was. She was so much younger that they made a pet of her. Bessie had made her a set of hand-painted paper dolls. And Myra curled Winona’s hair for Sundays and parties; she put it up on rags.
They were smiling at her fondly, but Mrs. Root wasn’t smiling.
“A pony,” she said, “would only encourage Winona in her tomboy ways.”
“Hear that, Win?” her father asked, and Winona knew what he meant. About some things he always minded Mother. He said Mother knew more than he did about raising girls.
Winona slipped off his lap and looked up at that picture she liked. She looked hard at the mouse. What was it doing there? She was trying not to cry.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be satisfied with Toodles,” her father said. He sounded sorry.
Toodles heard his name and got to his feet, stretching and curling his tail. He always went to bed with Winona. He was supposed to sleep in his basket, in a corner of the library. It was a comfortable boat-shaped basket with a red and brown blanket inside. But he went upstairs when Winona did and curled up on the foot of her bed.
When Mr. and Mrs. Root went to bed they called him down and put him in his basket. It didn’t do any good. As soon as the door of their room was closed, he sneaked back to Winona.
He ran upstairs ahead of her now, as fast as his short legs would take him. At the top he paused and barked for her to hurry. Winona followed glumly.
She liked her room. It had fluffy yellow curtains, and the yellowish-brown matting on the floor smelled pleasant, like hay. All her toys and books were here. Her doll house stood in a corner.
Selma had lighted the gas jet and turned it down low.
Winona went to the east window. There were two windows in her room. One looked north down Pleasant Street Hill. The east one looked over the roof of the back porch to the barn where Bob and Florence were sleeping. She wondered whether they were standing up or lying down. Horses could sleep standing up; Ole had told her so.
“It can’t be very comfortable,” Winona thought. “If I had a pony, I’d teach him to sleep lying down. I’d want my pony very well took care of.” She winked back tears.
Toodles, who had jumped up on her bed, began to whine, and Winona went over to him. He fell upon her, bouncing and sniffing and licking her hands and face. Winona pushed him off and he bounced back again. He barked and she laughed. It was fun.
“Yup!” said Winona, breathless from laughing. “Yup! Yup! I love you, Toodles. But I wish I had a pony. And I wish there were more than fifteen party invitations.”
4
A Different Kind of Party Invitation
AT SCHOOL the next afternoon Winona heard about a different kind of party invitation.
Miss Canning’s room was the Third Grade. It was on the ground floor, and through the tall windows you could see the girls’ yard, a sandy playground with two maple trees, good for playing Prisoners Base. Their leaves were colored yellow now.
Dennie sat across the aisle from Winona, and that afternoon he gave her another stick of gum.
Winona was always glad to get gum; she wasn’t allowed to chew it at home. Of course, she couldn’t chew it in school either, but she could chew it at recess. She chewed this gum all through recess until the girls’ line and the boys’ line formed to march back into the school house. Then she stuck it on her signet ring. She squeezed it into a very tight ball and she thought it looked like a ruby.
But Miss Canning saw it and recognized it for gum. She took it away.
Dennie and Winona walked across the street to Winona’s house together.
“That was good gum,” Winona said. “I’d invite you to my birthday party, Dennie, only I haven’t got any more invitations.”
“Can’t you just write some more?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“No. You see, my father had them printed down at the paper, and there were just fifteen, and my mother has sent them out to fifteen people. She’s terribly sorry but there aren’t any more.”
“Heck!” said Dennie. “I don’t need a printed invitation. You can just invite me, and I’ll come.”
“Will you?”
“Of course. When I have a birthday party, I don’t print invitations or write invitations or stuff like that. My mother just tells me I can invite some kids and I invite them.”
Winona gazed at him, her black eyes growing bigger and brighter.
“That’s all there is to it,” Dennie said. “I’d have asked you to some of my parties, Winona, but I’ve always had just boys. Maybe this year I’ll have girls, too. I’ll say to you, ‘Say, can you come to a birthday party at my house tomorrow?’ and you’ll say sure, you can come.”
They had reached her wall. Toodles was waiting for her, as he always did, wagging his tail and wriggling all over with pleasure.
“Toodles always seems to be waiting for you here,” Dennie remarked.
“Yes,” answered Winona. “He is. Toodles knows just as well as anybody does when school is over. Toodles is smart.”
But she wasn’t thinking about Toodles.
“Say, Dennie,” she said carelessly, “can you come to my birthday party?”
“When’s it going to be?”
“Next Thursday afternoon at half-past three.”
“Sure, I’ll come,” he answered. “I’ll bring a present, too.”
After Dennie ran off down the hill, Winona stood smiling broadly. This was glorious! Dennie’s way of inviting people to parties settled all her problems.
When Scundar and Marium came toiling up the hill, Winona called out to them.
“I’m giving a birthday party. Next Thursday afternoon at half-past three. Can you come?”
They were surprised but very, very pleased.
“We would be honored,” said Scundar, taking off his hat.
“We are full of thanks to you,” Marium exclaimed. Her small face was as bright as the scarf tied over her head. But after a moment it dimmed.
“I think I can come,” she said. “But in the afternoon my mother goes out selling the embroideries. My Aunt Almaze takes care of my little brother Faddoul until I get home from school, but then I take care of him.” She looked worried.
“Why, bring him to the party!” cried Winona hospitably.
Marium breathed deeply. “Would that be all right?”
“Of course! Bring him! Bring him!” Winona urged.
When Lottie and Lettie brought the laundry back, Winona invited them.
“I’m giving a birthday party. Can you come?”
The twins looked at each other and smiled. Their smiles would have been exactly alike except that Lottie had just lost two front teeth, and Lettie’s matching ones were only loose. She wiggled them all the time so they would hurry and come out like Lottie’s. But she stopped wiggling them now.
“Oh! Oh! We’d love to!” she cried.
“When’s it going to be?” asked Lottie.
“Next Thursday afternoon at half-past three.”
Winona invited people and invited people. She invited Betsy, Tacy, and Tib when they came to make the leaf house. They accepted promptly, but Betsy looked a little puzzled.
“Don’t you send out invitations to your birthday parties?” she asked.
“Oh! Sometimes I do,” said Winona airily. “And sometimes I don’t. It’s an awful bother. If you send out invitations, somebody has to print them, and somebody has to address them, and you have to decide how many kids you’re going to have. Just asking people is lots easier.”
They all agreed.
“Well, I’m practically sure we can come,” said Betsy. “When is it?”
“Next Thursday afternoon at half-past three.”
They ran down the terrace and scuffled through the leaves that covered the lower lawn. Toodles ran after them, yelping joyfully. Fat squirrels with plumy tails dodged each other on the branches, and
blue jays were flashing about.
The girls ran out to the barn and Ole gave them rakes. Ole took care of the lawn in summer and the fires in winter and the horses all the year round.
Winona and Betsy, Tacy, and Tib began to rake.
They had a wonderful time making the leaf house. There were leaves of every kind and color. Oak leaves and maple leaves and elm tree leaves. Orange-brown and red-brown and pink and pure gold and red and yellow and green.
Winona and Betsy, Tacy, and Tib raked them into walls. They made a parlor and a back parlor and a dining room and a kitchen and bedrooms.
Tib put lots of closets in the bedrooms.
“People never have enough closets. That’s what my father says,” she declared.
They made a porch. And Winona ran up to the side porch of her house and picked a piece of bright red vine to drape around the leaf house porch.
That gave Betsy an idea. She picked some of Mrs. Root’s frostbitten zinnias. (Winona said she might.) She and Tacy stuck them in a row along the front of the leaf house.
“I want a barn!” Winona cried. So they raked some more leaves and made a barn. As soon as it was finished they sat down in the middle of it and started to talk about Winona’s pony.
They all believed in the pony now. Or if they didn’t, they pretended they did, which made it just as nice.
“Let’s play a game of Naming the Pony,” said Betsy. So they began.
Winona suggested Dolly because she liked that name. But Tib didn’t want it, because she had an aunt named Dolly.
“It wouldn’t be respectful to name your pony Dolly,” she objected.
Betsy suggested Dixie and Tacy suggested Trixie. Tib suggested Buster, because of Buster Brown.
Winona suggested Sparkle; she had heard of a pony named Sparkle.
“Once,” said Betsy, “I heard of a pony named Question because he had a question mark on his face.”
“But maybe my pony won’t have a question mark!” Winona protested.
Tacy suggested Dumpling. “That would be very good if he’s fat,” she pointed out.