Floris saw the point. She subsided at once. She smiled at mamma with the first elder-daughter smile that had ever crossed the bright child-face.
“I guess I shall be ‘truly s’prised’ if we are s’prised,” she said, with a funny little grimace, as she laid her head on the pillow.
“Now, remember, it is to be a ‘truly keep-out,’” warned Mrs. Dewey. “You are not to enter the kitchen at all—not once all day to-morrow.”
“Why, surely, mamma Dewey, you are not to do anything towa’ds it before breakfast,” reasoned little Katy.
“I shall at least notice whether I am obeyed.”
“What’ll happen if we don’t?” inquired Katy.
“Nothing’ll happen then,” said mamma, quietly.
The little voices said no more, and mamma went down stairs. They said not a single word more, because the little Deweys were so constructed that had there not been a standing command that they should not speak after mamma closed the door, their little pink tongues would have run all night; but they squeezed each other’s hands very tightly, and also remained awake somewhat longer than usual.
Mrs. Dewey smiled next morning to see her daughters seated at their lessons in that part of the sitting-room furthest from the door that opened into the hall and thus into the kitchen. They never once directly referred to last night’s conversation; but they were extremely civil to her personally, most charmingly civil, obedient, and thoughtful. Indeed, Katy’s little round shingled head would bob out into the hall almost every time mamma’s step was heard. “You must let me bring you anything I can, mamma—anything I can, ’thout going into the kitchen, I mean.”
But, to Katy’s disappointment, mamma wished no assistance. Floris offered to go down town, if mamma needed. But mamma wished nothing that Floris could do. However, to their delight, they saw the delivery-man, when he came, taking down lots of orders in his book. “Would it be w’ong to listen in the hall?” Katy whispered. “’Cause I could hear everything she told him, ’f I was a-mind to.”