“Well, you don’t catch me,” returned Dorothy. “I don’t want to go with such a horrid story-teller as she is. I shouldn’t think you would, either.”
Edna said not a word, but still hoped.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FRIENDLESS FRIENDS
Margaret came to school in great excitement one Monday morning. “I’m going to have a party,” she said to Edna. “I’ll tell you all about it at recess.”
The idea of Margaret’s really having a party was most interesting when Edna remembered that it had been just a year since she was adopted by Mrs. MacDonald. She had improved very much in this time, both in speech and manner, and no happier child could be found than she. To be sure she had everything to make her happy, as Dorothy often said, a beautiful home, a kind mother and friends who took pains to make her forget how forlorn she had once been. She was very grateful for all these things, and rarely asked for anything more than was offered to her, so that Mrs. MacDonald was all the more ready to give her pleasures which she did not ask for.
Jennie and Dorothy were admitted into the little group which gathered to hear about the party. “Tell us all about it, Margaret,” said Edna. “Just begin at the beginning.”
“Well,” said Margaret, “mother was saying to me on Saturday evening, ‘Margaret, do you know it is almost a year since you became my own little daughter? Now I think we ought to celebrate the day of your coming to your home. What would you like to do?’ So I thought and thought, and then I said, ‘I never had a party in all my life, would it be too much to celebrate by having one?’ and she said, ‘Not at all, though I should first like to know what girls you would like to invite,’ and I told her all the G. R. Club. ‘Anyone else?’ she asked, and I thought of Nettie Black. ‘I’d like to have Nettie,’ I said, and then I remembered how lonely I used to be even at the Friendless, and how glad I used to be when you came to see me, Edna, and I thought of two or three who were still there, girls who haven’t been adopted, and I said I’d like to have them. Then mother said, ‘Very well, only the others may not want to come if you have poor children like them, and you’d better ask the girls, and if they refuse you can make up your mind which you would rather have, the girls of the club or the Friendlessers.’”