WIDE MEADOWS: GUEST AT TEA PARTY TURNS OUT TO BE COUNTY THIEF (A CONTINUING SERIES)

"A tea party," Mom said softly, almost reverently.

"A tea party," the rest of us echoed.

"I'll get the tea," Grandma said, practically, hurrying to the pantry.

"Do you have a lace cloth?" Mr. Sheckers asked, helping to clear the kitchen table.

"Oh, no," Mom said, sadly, like it was all off.

"No matter, no matter." He brushed it aside as a picayune.

"A linen one," Mom suggested.

"Fine, fine," he said. "Now sugar, spoons, and cups."

Lou and I flew to the cabinet to get the cups and set them around the table.

"Oh, no, no, no," he protested. "You set the cups at one end -- like this. Then someone sits here and pours the tea from a pot as you line up and come around."

Our faces fell.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

"No teapot." Grandma stated our dilemma. "Just a coffeepot."

"Oh, that's where I come in. I happen to have one here in my valise. A little present I was taking to Aunt Mabel. We'll just use it."

He took his valise off into the front room to open it, and came back in a minute with a teapot. It was the prettiest thing any of us had ever seen. Squatty at the bottom and growing slender toward the top, a spout as graceful as a swallow's wing and a handle with little curlicues. It was silver, polished and gleaning, intricately engraved.

We stood in awed silence as we always did in the presence of something perfect and beautiful.

"Now, who will sit here and pour?" he asked.

"We'll take turns," Mom suggested.

Oh, it was fun. We didn't sit at the table but just around the room anywhere, as Mr. Sheckers taught us to do. We tried to hold the old kitchen cups like they were fine china, and the tea tasted ever so good.

When it was my turn to pour, my hands were shaking so I almost missed the cups. I ran my hand lovingly over the silver teapot and looked closely at the engraving. It seemed like the bird and feather writing our Uncle Hayden could do. Why, here was a name on the side. I spelled it out to myself. "It says Caroline,' on it," I exclaimed.

Mr. Sheckers set his cup down noisily. "Yes," he explained. "Most people call my Aunt Mabel by her second name, Caroline.'"

We cleared it all away before Dad and Grandpa got back from the barn and it was a sort of unspoken agreement that we would not mention it. It would seem a bit frivolous, drinking tea from a silver teapot while they were out in the freezing weather, feeding pigs and bedding down cattle.

After supper that day, Grandpa said he believed he'd try to get over to our mailbox on the morrow.

Mr. Sheckers looked up quickly, "I'll go with you," he suggested.

"Oh, no need," Grandpa replied.

"I'll go for you, then," Mr. Sheckers amended. "Where is the mailbox?"

"Oh, Steve," Grandma put in, "probably won't be anything there but the Farmington News and I guess it can wait another week."

Grandpa made no answer. We popped corn, ate apples and went to bed.

The next morning Mr. Sheckers was gone. There was no trace of him whatsoever, except his footprints leading away from the back door.

"Well, better go after him," Dad said. "He's likely to get lost again."

"Oh, let him go," Mom protested. "If he wanted to leave like this, it would only embarrass him to be caught."

"Peculiar fellow," Dad said, and Grandpa nodded his head in agreement.

We womenfolk didn't see anything wrong with him. In fact, Lou and I had such long faces after his departure that Mom, trying to cheer us, said that as soon as the snow melted, we could give a tea party and invite some of the neighbors, now that we knew the proper way to conduct one.

It snowed off and on for four more days. Grandpa didn't go after the mail for another week. We had lots of it when he did go. Mom's magazine had come. There were sale circulars for Lillian, Lou and me to study, and a new wallpaper book from which to contemplate homemade valentines. We settled down to reading it all after supper that day.

"Been a burglary in at the county seat," Grandpa said, turning the pages of the paper.

"Did they catch him?" I asked.

"He walked in and confessed," Grandpa said, after reading on a while. "Had a whole valise full of stolen stuff. Candlesticks, teapots and jewelry." He started reading aloud to us, "The criminal said he had gotten entangled in the furnace of living because he had become convinced that there was no longer any human kindness and compassion and decency in this world. However, a recent experience, the criminal said, had caused him to think otherwise and he wished to start life anew after he had paid his social debt.'"

Mom dropped her magazine and looked at Dad, and Grandma stopped knitting. "Does it give his name?" she demanded interestedly.

"Elam Hagarty," Grandpa read. "Of course, he used lots of other names. Used to be a schoolteacher, it says."

"I just wish a burglar would come around here," Lou said, a menacing look coming into her eyes. "I'd pour boiling water out the upstairs window on him."

"I'd gig him with the gig," I vouched.

"I'd stick him with the pitchfork." Lou's voice grew more determined.

"I'd cut his head off with the sickle," I said, going all out.

"Children, children," Mom scolded, putting an end to our gruesome plans. "Sometimes a little human kindness and decency works wonders. Look what it did for Mr. Hagarty? Besides, I'm not sure you'd know a burglar when you saw one, nor would I." She laughed. She and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa exchanged peculiar knowing glances and we all went back to our reading.

"Jeanie, see if the silver spoon is in the drawer," Mom said after a while.

This seemed funny to me since no one had to take any medicine that night.

"It's there," I reported.

"All right," Mom said, going back to her reading.

The sleet peppered against the windowpanes. Upstairs the loose shutter rattled softly. The teakettle made contented sounds on the back of the stove. Old Tabby purred on the hearth. After a while Grandma got up and set the buckwheat cakes to rise for breakfast and we all went to bed.

Next: The days go by.