"All right, don't, then," retorted Miss Billy wrathfully. "I'll ask Marie Jean, instead. She'll be glad to come, I guess. But I don't understand you at all, Bea. It isn't like you to be so petty and small."
Beatrice walked away without another word, and Miss Billy marched defiantly to the Hennesy fence, and vaulted lightly over. It was wicked of Miss Billy, for she knew that this tomboyish expression of independence would be most irritating to Beatrice.
Marie Jean Hennesy, sitting with her embroidery on the back porch, looked amazed at the breathless apparition which appeared over the fence.
"You're the very one I wanted to see," said Miss Billy. "The Street Improvement Club is going to meet in our yard this morning, and the children are going to read reports of what they have accomplished. I'm sure you'd be interested, and I do wish you'd come and hear them."
Marie Jean was not so enthusiastic. "I don't know," she said doubtfully. "I was intending to finish this work to-day."
"I do wish you'd come," urged Miss Billy. "There will be no one there besides the children, except Mr. Lindsay,—the young man staying at Mr. Schultzsky's. I think you'd enjoy it."
Marie Jean folded her linen slowly. "Maybe I'll come," she decided, "if I can get my dress changed in time."
"Don't stop to fix up," cautioned Miss Billy. "Come as soon as you can."
"You'd betther be makin' haste, Mary Jane," called Mrs. Hennesy from the foot of the stairs ten minutes later. "I seen the children go trapesing into Miss Billy's a minute ago, an' I guess maybe they're waitin' on you."