“Suppose you let me write her about the date of the party?” suggested Mr. Thayer. “Then you needn’t bother.”
Evidently the change in correspondents did not displease Babbie seriously, for she was back on the appointed day, with a bewitching smile, flashed out from beneath a bewitching hat, for all her stocking factory friends, including Mr. Thayer. The party was a sort of spring fête held out on the grounds of the factory, in the late afternoon and early evening. There were folk dances in costume, national songs, and old-country games. Emily had made all the guests feel a tremendous pride in doing whatever they could to entertain the rest, and everything, from the Irish bag-pipe music to the Russian mazurkas, went off with great spirit.
It was while Jimmie O’Ferrel was dancing a jig with all his might and main, and with all eyes fastened upon his flying feet, that Betty, happening to glance across the grounds, saw a bewitching hat slip swiftly from the fence top down on the tea-shop side. But she had no proof that Mr. Thayer was concerned in the disappearance of the hat, until the smallest sister sought her out importantly, a little later.
“Do you want to know what I think?” she asked. “Well, I think Babbie and Mr. Thayer are in love.”
“Why do you think that?” asked Betty laughingly.
“Because,” explained Dorothy, “I ran up in the Peter Pan Annex just now to see how small people look ’way down here from ’way up there, and I jumped ’most out of my skin ’cause there those two sat. They never saw me at all, and he had his arm around her and she didn’t care. She was smiling about it. So I came straight away. Was that right?”
“Of course,” laughed Betty. “You hadn’t been invited.”
“I was invited to Mr. Thayer’s party, though,” objected Dorothy, “and now he isn’t here. He’s over at our house. That’s queer.”
Up in the Peter Pan Annex Mr. Thayer was saying to Babbie, “I must go back before any one misses me.”
“I can’t go back,” said Babbie sadly. “I tore my dress dreadfully getting over the fence. You shouldn’t have made me do it.”