Was it selfish not to want to stay here? Yet Kathie put on her most attractive smiles and actually sold several articles while Miss Weston was gone.
Then, hunting up Emma Lauriston, they set out on a tour, Uncle Robert said. They went to the Dutch kitchen, where Miss Jessie was one of the "young ladies" to-night; and very pretty she looked, though Uncle Robert insisted that she could not talk a word of Dutch. They had cream afterward, candy, nuts, and fruit, until it appeared to Kathie that she had eaten enough to last a week.
There had been a discussion at first about continuing the Fair on Thanksgiving day, but, as the articles were so nearly sold out, it was decided to have an auction. That made great fun indeed. By eleven o'clock the tables were emptied, and the refreshments reduced to a rather fragmentary state. The crowd, too, began to thin out.
Such a hunting for baskets and hampers and boxes of every description, such a hurrying and scurrying and confusion of voices, was seldom witnessed in quiet Brookside. In the crowd Kathie ran over Lottie.
"O dear!" the latter exclaimed, fretfully, "aren't you half tired to death, Kathie Alston? I've ruined my dress too,—this lovely blue silk! I am sure I don't know what ma will say. Some one trod on it, as I was sitting down, and tore off the trimming, and that clumsy Harry Cox spilled lemonade on me. Children ought not to be allowed in such places, especially boys who do not know how to behave!" and she uttered this with a great deal of emphasis. "And I've lost one of my new kid gloves. They were such a lovely shade. There is nothing in Brookside like them!
"She ought to have known better than to dress in such state, as if she was going to a party," whispered Emma Lauriston. "I am cream and pie and cake-crumbs, and goodness only knows what, and devoutly thankful that I shall not have to go to school to-morrow. But it has been a success. Mrs. Wilder made one hundred and forty dollars at her table,—our table," with a laugh.
"And mamma has made nearly two hundred."
"I long to hear the aggregate."
"It will not be less than two thousand," exclaimed Uncle Robert, trying to open a path for the girls.