“Yes, I do; and I know where I can borrow some old blue dishes and pewter platters.”
“Oh, it will be lovely fun!” sighed May. “How many are you going to ask?”
“About twenty. I don’t believe Jack will care much about dressing up—he hates it; but I’ll coax him to. Well, come on, May, we must go and invite the others. Don’t worry about your dress, Tilly. If you can’t borrow one, Mother and I will fit you out.”
“Thanks. You’re a dear, Betty; I wish you’d let me make brown bread for you, though. I can make it to perfection.”
“I’ll tell you what, Betty,” said May, “why don’t you have a sort of ‘Harvest Home.’ They’re lovely and picturesque. You make a great big pile of things like cabbages and pumpkins and potatoes, and decorate it with corn husks and things; and then, don’t you see, we can all bring something for it, and afterward we can give the eatables to the poor people in ‘The Hollow.’ And Tilly can donate some brown bread to them, too.”
“That’s a fine idea,” said Betty; “we’ll ask everybody to bring something for the Harvest Home, and then the next day we can all make the round of The Hollow in the big box-sleigh.”
“Yes, I know some families down there who would be more than glad to get things like that,” said Tilly.
“And well may anybody be glad to get the good bread you make,” said Betty. “I’m coming to-morrow, Tilly, to take you for a ride in my new sleigh, and then we can talk about your dress for the party and other things to be done.”
Gay good-bys were said, and the two girls went jingling away in the sleigh again.
Tilly was not so happily situated in life as Betty and May. She lived with an aunt who, though she took good care of her, was not very sympathetic in the matter of young people’s pleasures, and taught Tilly to sew and to make bread, because she considered such things the important part of a girl’s education. And she was right enough in that, if she had only realized that a girl of fifteen wants and needs her share of fun as well as of useful knowledge.