“Let her go, she won’t do any harm.”
“Yes she will. She’ll hear every single word we say and tell Gus of it just as quick as she gets home. I know her, of old.”
Poor Anne had had bitter experiences of her little sister’s quickness of hearing and equal quickness in repeating whatever she had heard, and she was far too shrewd to trust her on this occasion. But how to get rid of the dear little nuisance—ah, that was the rub!
“May,” she whispered mysteriously, and Ef May pricked up her ears and looked curious. “If you’ll go home now, like a good girl, you shall (put your ear closer, so Lotty won’t hear) go to Mrs. White’s party, to-night.”
Ef May had often heard older people talk about parties, and in her inquisitive little soul she had longed many a time, to know more about them, and especially to see with her own eyes what they were like; and now she stood with her great blue eyes wide open like a pair of very early morning glories, and a little flush of excitement deepened the roses on her plump cheeks, as Anne continued in her most seductive tones:
“Now, run right along, there’s a darling! and I’ll get you ready, my own self, and see that you have a”—
“Rockaway?” suggested Lotty, in a voice that sounded suspiciously hoarse, to which Anne replied, with an air of lofty disdain that,—
“Ef May had outgrown such babyish ways long ago, and would go to the party as other folks did.”
Ef May was a very old bird for one of her age, and this “chaff” between the two girls did strike her as a little suspicious. Perhaps there was some hidden flaw in this magnificent offer, and jerking her little yellow curly head one side like a shrewd canary, she fixed one round, bright eye full upon her sister’s face as she asked solemnly:
“Now, Anne Marsh,—‘honest an’ true, black an’ blue,’ can I go to Mrs. White’s party, this very night?”