“I should say it did. How quiet everything seems. Hilda, wake up! it’s morning.”
“I don’t care,” returned Hilda, sleepily, turning over.
“But it’s Fourth of July! Do get up! We want to get ahead of the boys.” For two boy cousins, Will and Archie Somers, were visiting them.
“Oh, dear!” yawned Hilda, who was always a sleepy head. “I think I’d rather not have any Fourth of July.”
“But the Fourth’s here, and we’ve got to have it!” said Cricket, pulling the sheet from under Hilda. “Get up, you lazy girl. I’m all dressed.” For Cricket dressed as she did everything else, “like a streak of greased lightning,” as Donald said.
“Oh, I’m getting up!” and Hilda turned out reluctantly.
“I’m going to the boys’ door, while you’re finishing,” said Cricket. “I’ll be back in a minute.” She slipped out into the hall, as still as a mouse. It was very dark out there, and she had to feel her way along.
Suddenly, ahead of her, came a glimmer of light, and a tall, white figure appeared, that startled Cricket so that she turned, with a scream, to run back. It was only Eliza, who, aroused by the children’s voices, was coming from the nursery to see what was the matter, but Cricket was blinded by the sudden light, so that she did not recognize her. She lost her bearings, turned to the left instead of the right, and the next moment she was plunging head-foremost down the stairs, with a crash that in two minutes assembled a white-clad household.
“What is the matter?” asked everybody, hurriedly, of everybody else.
Doctor Ward sprang down the staircase to investigate. At the bottom lay a little heap.