“Oh, Mother, don’t make me feel cheap!” she exclaimed. “You know perfectly well that I’m just bursting with excitement, only I’m ashamed to show it, for it’s you who are going to be left at home doing just the same old things and seeing just the same old people and everything.”
“But I’m happy doing just that,” Katherine hurried to assure her. “Why, you yourself, Kate, have been looking forward to your vacation here and planning it with such pleasure!”
“Ye—es. But that was before this came. Now I don’t see how I could bear the thought of just staying here! Now that I’m going to have pretty clothes and go to parties and meet some boys and girls, and have a girl chum of my own—why, what I was so looking forward to doesn’t seem anything at all. I’ve suddenly waked up, and there’s a big door open right in front of me, bigger than our funny old front door! I’m going through it, right into such fun! Only I’m leaving you behind. That isn’t fair.”
Katherine was quick to understand. Kate’s whole mood was as real to her as though it were her own. She said, “But don’t you see, dear, I had all that fun a thousand times over when I was a girl. Aunt Katherine gave me parties galore and took me to the theatre as often as Father would let her and there was anything worth seeing. And now that you are to have some of that life for a month, I am delighted. I only wish Aunt Katherine had asked you sooner. I have truly always hoped she would. Only, I suppose, she thought I was like Father and wouldn’t accept things for you any more than for myself. And oh, Katie dear, do try to be patient with Aunt Katherine, no matter what she does or says! Perhaps you will make up a little to her for what I have taken away.”
They stood now in the kitchen, facing each other. Suddenly Kate laughed, her nicest laugh that screwed up her eyes into slits and turned her into a Puck. “Let’s put off supper then,” she cried. “Stodgy old suppers we can have any night. Let’s get out all the clothes we’ve got and just plan. I’m not going to let you touch any of your good ones for me. I’m truly not. But there may be some old things we’ve forgotten.”
“Now you’re really common-sensible, my dear,” Katherine affirmed. “Before it was only pretend common-sensibleness.”
And arm-in-arm, without one look at the kitchen clock which now was pointing to all of quarter past six, they went through the funny, merry little barn house toward the bedrooms.
CHAPTER II
THE BOY IN THE FLOWERY, DRAGONY PICTURE FRAME
During the next few days of hurried preparation for the visit the Hart boys found themselves almost entirely left out of the life in the little barn house, the house that ordinarily served as a second home for them.
“No time for boys to-day,” Kate would call out crisply when they appeared at windows or door. “Woman’s business is afoot. We’re too busy even to look at you.”