"Jennifer! You'ro coming to a Children's Party with me on Thurs day. Do you mind?
Oh, good!" said Jennifer. She was being a conscientious aunt to Heather, axed four, and the floor was strewn with beloved, though dog-cared, nursery literature.
"Am V going to a party?
Heather. es darling, Jean's party. "Are you going?"
"Yes, dear."
"Is Auntie soing?"
"Yes, of course."
"Is Cook going?
Is Boy going. Is Amah goitig?
"Shall "you wear your party dress?" broke in Auntie tactfully, and the flood was stemmed, love parties," said Jennifer, a few days later, a we climbed eare~ fully into the ear in order not to crush Heather's organdie frills, "I expect we shall be Timp at the end of it. Last year I lest my voice helping at the Warren children's Christmas one. We all screamed so at musical chairs. Mos? many babes will there be to-day? About a dozen?"
"This is Shanghai," I said. "We do everything by doubles.
We were A little Into, and the Boy ushered us upstairs into a bedroom crowded with little boys and girls and their attendants, "Put her coat in this corner, murmured, "We'll never find an; thing again, otherwise." The procession began to move downstairs—Heather very anxious that her new shoes should not be stepped on. Behaving like perfect ladies in the queue we eventually reached our hostess.
"Oh, how do you do?" she said distractedly, "And your sister—I'm so glad you came along too—and Heather, how are you, darling? you could get into the next room there's some tea there. Do get people to move. Oh! there's Mrs. Tremayne—How do you do!"
'We passed on, smiling brightly, and surged into' the dining room.
We assimilated meringues, we pulled crackers, we discouraged Heather from the pate de fole shrieked insincere com. Dliments across the table about the progeny of total strangers. The air was full of scent, powder, cracker fumes,—the voices of little boys demanding more balloons, and of little girls requiring more chocolate biscuits.
And then, ina lull, the voice of our hostess—"Shall we all go upstairs?" she asked feverishly, think the cinema is ready now."
Row upon row of children sat on the floor and yelled for the performance to begin. At the end of each picture the brighter spirits stoleed their opinions to the universe at large.
"More Felix!"
"No, no, we've soon that old one before—we want Harold Lloyd."
"Who wants to see a polar bear? That's rotten!"
Go on—go on! Mor Heather, spellbound at her first movie, was whispering to herself, like the cat! I like the eat!" She clapped continuously and vehemently the hand of a strange little boy in velvet trousers, and in moments of tense excitement they would look ft one another, each give one piereshriek, and then resume a rapt contemplation.
left" comparatively carly, Heather" staggering under the weight of her parting gift, a beautifat dell, "Much too good' for now, oughtn't we to take care And T could make it hor Aunt, eyeing it covetously.
Meather herself was a state of coma by now, and was skillfully slipped into bed before she could wake up enough to be discursive.
""E hope she doesn't dream. They're too wonderfully Kind, but can yeu wonder that I only Jot her go to one party a season? Some children have three and four a week during December.
We tip-toed out of the nursery.
"What about musical chairs, T queried, as we trailed the parties of cur youth And we ply Joved them.. feel at Toast a hundred to-night!"
And to prove it she slid down the bannisters.—s1.0.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.