‘Sally, don’t cry,’ she whispered, ‘don’t let Mother hear you cry. She is going to have such a nice party to-day. You and I will slip into the house. We won’t let any one see us. And I will put clean clothes on you as fast as I can. Come, Sally, come!’
Aunt Bee held out her hand with such a sweet, inviting smile that Sally, miserable as she was, scrambled out from under the bush and hurried on tiptoe after Aunt Bee into the house.
Up the back stairs they went as quiet as could be. Mother and her friends, talking busily together, did not hear them at all. And once safely upstairs, Aunt Bee’s fingers were so nimble and Sally stood so still that, in less time than you might think, she was turned from a black-a-moor into a pink-and-white little girl again.
AFTER THE MUD PIES
Mother opened her eyes in surprise when Sally came walking into the room wearing a pink frock instead of the new white dress, but she didn’t ask any questions, not a single one.
So Sally made her curtsy, as she had planned to do. And at the luncheon table she was ‘as quiet as a mouse and as polite as a lady,’ just as Mother had said.
When the party was over and the guests were gone, Sally sat on Mother’s lap and told her all about it.
‘I felt dreadfully to spoil my new white dress, Mother,’ said Sally, when the story was ended. ‘But I remembered what you said, that it didn’t matter what dress I wore so long as I was clean and good.’
‘Do you know who I think was good to-day?’ asked Mother, looking down into Sally’s upturned face. ‘Some one who was ready for a party in her new white frock, and yet who washed and dressed a muddy little girl so that she might come to the party, too.’