Conversation during dinner, led by Mrs. Clyde, concerned itself chiefly with the coming tea-party. Tea-parties were unknown things to Blue Bonnet. It seemed to her that they were rather serious affairs. Especially did it appear too bad to go to so much trouble for so few guests; and she could not get over her feeling of sympathy for those left out.
“These are the young girls from among whom your grandmother and I wish you to choose your friends, Elizabeth,” her aunt told her.
“Then I’m not to like them all, Aunt Lucinda?”
“Certainly, if you find them all congenial.”
“I hope some of them are a little more lively than Sarah Blake,” Blue Bonnet observed thoughtfully. “I don’t dislike Sarah, but I can’t say as I’m very keen on her—yet.”
“It is not good taste to criticize your friends, Elizabeth.”
“I’m not sure she is going to be a friend, Aunt Lucinda.”
“Elizabeth!”
Whereupon, Blue Bonnet asked to be excused, and went to her practising. “I’m getting a bit tired of being—‘Elizabethed,’” she said, screwing up the piano-stool with quite unnecessary vigor.