“No-o, I guess maybe not. Frisky’s old chum, that she had before me, said it wasn’t, but I didn’t s’pose she knew. I’ll tell Frisky what you think, and I’ll tell Shirley that I forgive her if she truly didn’t mean it. Of course I can’t be chums with her again, because now I’m chums with Frisky. But I won’t call her tattle-tale any more, and I’ll tell the others what you think.” The Smallest Sister sighed and slipped off the chair. “I guess—I guess I’d better be going,” she said very softly. “Were you—were you going to have ice-cream for supper, maybe?”
Betty stifled an impulse to take the appealing little figure in her arms and promise her ice-cream and chicken patties and hot chocolate and all the other dainties she loved best. She had been a very naughty little girl, and mother would say——
The Smallest Sister, oddly enough, was also thinking of mother. “I guess it doesn’t matter what you’re going to have,” she announced hastily. “I guess mother would say I’d better go back and think it all over by myself quietly, and—and next time ’member to ask you first what you think about tattle-tales that don’t mean to be and—and perhaps come some other night for supper. Oh”—her voice broke—“I honestly forgot that I’m to go home.”
“But we’re friends again, now,” Betty told her, “and you’re going to tell me things just as you always have. Aren’t you? Will you, I mean, if I should think it over, and decide that it will be all right for you to stay?”
“Yes, I will. I will ask you about every least little thing I want to do,” declared Dorothy earnestly. “Do you think that maybe you’ll decide I may stay?”
“Yes, I think I’ll decide that you may stay,” laughed Betty. “So don’t ever make me sorry that I’ve decided that way.”
“I won’t. I’m sure I won’t. I just hate to have you cry, Betty.”
“I think,” Betty told her with a very sober face, “that you’d better not come for supper for two whole weeks. That will make you remember better perhaps. And when you come you may bring your new chum, if Miss Dick is willing.”
“Oh, goody for joy!” The Smallest Sister quite overlooked the penalty imposed on herself in the idea of being able to do something for her dear, misused Frisky.
She said good-bye contentedly, because she could tell Frisky the sooner by going home to tea, and she skip-hopped down-stairs and up the street much too gaily for a naughty little girl who had been deprived of a treat and sent away to think over her naughtiness in private.