“Oh, never fear,” said Mrs. Blake, comprehendingly, “I’ll redd Jim up until nobody’ll know him.”
Ladybird went away thrilling with an exalted sense of having done a most meritorious act, and eager to let the good work go on.
“It seems to me,” she thought, “that people like Jim Blake will enjoy the party heaps more than the Smiths and Fairchilds, and I’m going to ask all the poor ones I know first, and then fill up with the others. Why, it says in the Bible, when ye make a feast to scoop in the halt and the blind and the maimed and the lamed; and that reminds me, Dick Harris is lame, and so is his grandfather, for that matter. I believe I’ll ask them both; Aunt Priscilla didn’t say I had to have only children. And Mr. Harris got lame in the war, so I’m sure he’ll enjoy it; he’s a veteran G. A. R., and I just know Aunt Priscilla will like him.”
The Harris gentlemen were delighted to accept; and Ladybird gracefully apologized for not inviting the other members of the family by saying, “I’d love to ask you all, but I can only have eleven, and there are so many who seem to need invitations.”
“The two firemen”
As Ladybird proceeded, her charity grew wider, and finally acknowledged no bounds either social or ethical.
She invited old Miss Leech, who had lost most of her physical and many of her mental faculties; and whose acceptance was unduly delayed because for a long time she could not make out what her excited visitor was driving at.
Next, Ladybird invited two firemen. This she did with mixed motives: partly because she happened to meet them, and their red shirts and shiny helmets attracted her color-loving eye, and partly because she had a vague impression that it was always wise to keep on good terms with firemen. But to her surprise, though evidently highly appreciating the invitation, they positively declined.
This experience moved Ladybird to confine her invitations to younger guests, and she succeeded in securing Sam Scott, an idiot boy, and the widow Taylor’s two small twins. The widow Taylor frankly announced that she would have to accompany the twins, as they were imps of mischief and would destroy everything in sight; but as she seemed so anxious to come, Ladybird concluded she was a most desirable guest.