“I’m dreadfully sorry we are late, Miss Ruth,” Betty cried out, excitedly—Betty was almost always the first to begin talking. “It is all my fault—I had to stay after school, and Elsa and Alice waited for me.” Betty stopped for breath, fanning herself with the skirt of her blue and green plaid gown.
“We wanted to wait,” said Alice with a shy, half-look at Miss Ruth, then turning quickly to examine the piles of dolls again, with Elsa.
“I got zero in arithmetic,” Betty rattled on again, “and I didn’t read well, and I got caught whispering, so I had to eat three little bitter blossoms and stay fifteen minutes after school. I wish there wasn’t any school,” she added, with a toss of her brown hair.
“So do I,” agreed Elsa, promptly, but Alice looked a little shocked.
“Help yourselves to the cookies, girls; Sarah made them especially for you,” said Miss Ruth, seeing Betty’s and Elsa’s eyes fixed upon the gingerbread animals.
“I shouldn’t care if I didn’t know anything, if I could have people read to me and tell me stories,” said Betty, biting off the trunk of an elephant cookie.
“O, Miss Ruth, you said you would tell us a story!” exclaimed Elsa, eagerly.
“Yes,—a story about a doll and an old lady,” cried Betty, forgetting her school troubles.
“Wasn’t it strange for an old lady to have a doll?” said Alice, her blue eyes very serious.
“Strange perhaps, but true,” replied Miss Ruth, who had taken the tongs and was stirring the fire into a splendid blaze. “Which would you rather have,—that story, or one about a ‘Prince Gray Owl?’”