"You know I've just studied with all my might and main, and mother said if I had all my lessons and a good record that I could have the thing I wanted most, if it didn't cost too very much. And I said I wanted a real party."
"It will be just splendid!" declared Hanny.
"And we've been counting up. We have seven cousins to ask. And the girls at school—some of them. I wish we knew some more boys. Oh, do you think Jim would come?"
"I'll ask him if you would like."
"Oh, just coax him. I suppose Benny Frank will feel that he's too old. But he's so nice. Oh, do you s'pose John Robert Charles' mother would let him come? Oh, there! I promised to call him Charles, but I think Robert's prettier, don't you? And mother said she'd write the invitations on note-paper. And she has some lovely little envelopes."
That did look like a party.
"I think John Robert Charles is real nice," said Hanny timidly. "But I am afraid of his mother."
"Oh, so is he, awful! Yet she isn't real ugly to him, only cross, and so dreadful particular. She makes him go out and wipe his feet twice, and wear that queer long cloak when it rains, and that red woollen tippet. She bought red because it was healthy; he said so. He wanted blue-and-gray. She lets him come over to our house sometimes, and he can sing just splendid. But the boys do make fun of him."
Poor John Robert Charles often thought his life was a burden on account of his name and his mother's great virtue of cleanliness. He was not allowed to play with the boys. Ball and marbles and hopscotch were tabooed. He could walk up and down and do errands, and that with going to school was surely enough. Then she exaggerated him. His white collars were always broader; if trousers were a little wide, his were regular sailor's. She bought his Sunday suit to grow into, so by the second winter it just fitted him. His every-day clothes she made. And oh, she cut his hair!
It is very hard to be the daughter of such a mother, a rigid, uncompromising woman with no sense of the fitness of things, of harmony or beauty, or indulgence in little fancies that are so much to a child. Quite as hard to be the son. Charles had everything needful to keep him warm, in good health, and books for study. When it rained hard he had six cents to ride in the omnibus. And he did have the cleanest house, and the cleanest clothes, and, his mother thought, a very nice time.