"Say," he said, "I can't take you out to supper. I have to take my cousin. She says so."
He looked back over his shoulder, threateningly.
"What she says now, goes. When I'm a man things will be different. Ain't you sorry I can't take you out?"
"Yes," I confessed, candidly.
He seemed to be glad that I should be sorry.
"He's going to take you out," he continued, with a jealous nod at the stout boy. "She asked him to."
I did not want to go with the stout boy. Every time that he looked sidewise at me I felt a sudden fear. Suppose that it should be a trick! Suppose that he should think of something new to do right now! When the inspiring march began, however, and we all fell into line, each little girl on the arm of her partner, I forgot everything in my excitement, and grew almost reconciled.
We passed solemnly around the parlor three times, and then swept across the hall into an opposite room. In the center of the room there stood a beautiful table, and the woman in the white cap, who was the only grown person in sight, was serving out pink ice-cream. The little girls sat on chairs about the walls, and the little boys brought them plates full of goodies from the table. There were lovely things which I had never seen before, much too pretty to eat, and almost too fragile to touch. And over the whole room there fell the soft light of candles.
"Do you like ice-cream?" the stout boy asked, when he had seen me settled in my chair. "I tell you what I'll do. I'll pick out all the things that I like."