The little girl smiled, but she shook her head with an air of happy importance.
“I’ll put ’em away for my breakfast,” she whispered. “I must save my appetite for to-night, you know.”
Anne could have cried with a relish.
“Oh, Ef May,” she began penitently, “I’m afraid I’ve done wrong in telling you—”
“Come, Anne! Come right in! Supper is waiting for you,” called their mother, and the confession was postponed until they should be alone again; but when that time came, and, after her usual custom Anne took the little one to her room to undress and put her to bed, the sight of the child’s happy expectant face forced back the words that she would have spoken and made her feel that she could not yet confess the deception.
“You must curl my hair real pretty, now. I do wish,” with a sigh, “that mamma would let me wear her waterwig.”
And the bright eyes shone like stars, as she thus gave the signal for the preparations to commence; and Anne obeyed, patiently brushing out the tangled locks and curling them one by one over her fingers, while she listened to the excited chatter of her little charge and vaguely wondered how long it would be possible for those dreadfully wide awake eyes to keep open. She was as long about her task as possible, but the the last curl was finished at last, and Effie asked eagerly:
“What dress are you going to put on me?”
By this time poor Anne was fairly desperate.
“I forgot to tell you,” she said with a sudden determination to carry out the joke to the end, “that this is a queer party, something like the ‘sheet and pillow case balls,’ that you’ve heard of,—and everybody goes to this in——in their nightgowns.”