“Then if you want me you can’t have her. I’m not going to see her sailing around and being made so much of. What do you suppose she will wear, Bess?”
“Oh, I suppose she wouldn’t get a new dress for the occasion. She will wear her best white, I suppose.”
“Humph!” Corinne gave a scornful exclamation. “Now listen. We will go to the post-office with her invitation; when we get inside you hand her invitation to me and I’ll do the rest. You can say you took it yourself to the post-office, can’t you? That will be the strict truth; you don’t have to know what happens after that.”
Bess had an idea of what would happen and felt very reluctant to hand over the invitation to Corinne, so she was silent.
“Aren’t you going to do it?” asked Corinne. “I suppose you will like her going around telling everybody that you are too fat to look well in your lovely new frock.”
This was rather a back-handed way of putting it, but Bess did not perceive that; she only saw that the glory of her attire might be undervalued; and so she gave in, at the same time feeling conscience-stricken and more unhappy as time went on. At the post-office she gave the envelope into Corinne’s hands, turned her back and asked no questions. “Now then,” said Corinne as they came out, “if anyone asks you all you have to say is that you took the invitation to the post-office yourself, and it will be perfectly true.”
Betsy promptly reported to her first best that she had received her invitation, that her aunt Emily said she was to go and could wear her white mull. “Which of your white frocks are you going to wear, Elizabeth?” she asked.
“I don’t suppose I shall wear any of them,” returned Elizabeth, in a subdued voice. “I haven’t been invited.”
“Oh, Elizabeth, I don’t believe it. I saw Corinne and Bess driving old Fan around in the pony-cart yesterday. Perhaps they didn’t have time to come out here and you will get yours today.”
This was an encouraging possibility; but as day after day went by and no invitation came Elizabeth was fain to believe that she had been left out.