“What shall we do?” exclaimed Elizabeth Eliza.
“We are not a family for an emergency,” said Agamemnon.
“What do you suppose they did in Philadelphia at the Exhibition, when there were more people than cups and saucers?” asked Elizabeth Eliza. “Could not you go and inquire? I know the lady from Philadelphia is talking about the Exhibition, and telling how she stayed at home to receive friends. And they must have had trouble there! Could not you go in and ask, just as if you wanted to know?”
Agamemnon looked into the room, but there were too many talking with the lady from Philadelphia.
“If we could only look into some book,” he said,--“the encyclopaedia or the dictionary, they are such a help sometimes!”
At this moment he thought of his “Great Triumphs of Great Men,” that he was reading just now. He had not reached the lives of the Stephensons, or any of the men of modern times. He might skip over to them,--he knew they were men for emergencies.
He ran up to his room, and met Solomon John coming down with chairs.
“That is a good thought,” said Agamemnon. “I will bring down more upstairs chairs.”
“No,” said Solomon John; “here are all that can come down; the rest of the bedroom chairs match bureaus, and they never will do!”
Agamemnon kept on to his own room, to consult his books. If only he could invent something on the spur of the moment,--a set of bedroom furniture, that in an emergency could be turned into parlor chairs! It seemed an idea; and he sat himself down to his table and pencils, when he was interrupted by the little boys, who came to tell him that Elizabeth Eliza wanted him.
The little boys had been busy thinking. They proposed that the tea-table, with all the things on, should be pushed into the front room, where the company were; and those could take cups who could find cups.
But Elizabeth Eliza feared it would not be safe to push so large a table; it might upset, and break what china they had.
Agamemnon came down to find her pouring out tea, in the back room. She called to him:--“Agamemnon, you must bring Mary Osborne to help, and perhaps one of the Gibbons boys would carry round some of the cups.”
And so she began to pour out and to send round the sandwiches, and the tea, and the coffee. Let things go as far as they would!