Floris told her it would be very wrong.
The elder little girl studied, and played, and sang, and amused her doll all the morning, and refused to listen to any pleasant sound she heard from the kitchen. She shut her little nose, also, against a sudden whiff of deliciousness as some door opened. She even went to the well, and brought hard water for her room, because the rain water would have taken her near the forbidden regions.
But little Katy was as restless as a bee. She had a thousand errands through the hall. When Floris reprimanded her, she said she didn’t ’tend to go a-near the kitchen door. Floris looked out often; but, at last, the little one settled on the hall stairs with her paint-box, and the elder sister felt at rest.
But even to her it finally grew a long forenoon. Before ten o’clock she found herself infected with the same restlessness. Then the various sounds which she heard distracted her, such busy sounds—she would, at last, have given almost anything to know what was going on out there.
The mantel clock was just striking eleven when the hall door unclosed, and Katy’s plump little person partially appeared.
“Come here, quick, quick! or she’ll be back. I’ve found out, Flory!”
“O, have you—Why, Katy Dewey!” Floris over-turned the music-stool as she ran. Katy, her head turned listeningly toward the kitchen door, blindly crowded a spoonful of something into her mouth.
“There! isn’t that ’licious good? O, Floris, such things as I have seen out there!—the box of raisins is down on the table, and all her extrach Lubin bottles. I couldn’t stay to look much; but, Floris, there’s twelve of the most beautiful mince patties—O, the most beautiful! all iced, and ‘Merry Christmas,’ in pink sand, on every one, and there’s twelve more in the iron ready to fill—wasn’t that I gave you crammed with raisins!”
Floris’s eyes danced. “Kit Dewey, I’ll bet we’re going to have a Christmas party—a party of little boys and girls! What else was there, do tell me!”
“O, I d’no; there was heaps of raisins—and, mebbe, there was ice cream;” suddenly remembering Floris’s fondness for that delectable.