"Miss Catherine, you're just as good as you can be, and I'll do something to oblige you, too, some time," said Sally, her face aglow with delight; and having hurried into her jacket and tied up her head in a worsted muffler, was off.
She almost ran over the packed snow down the street. She had soon left the quiet rows of private dwelling-houses and come where hundreds of lights glittered across the rose-tinged snow. At every few rods a street band tootled and blared, covering the scraping of snow-shovels and jingle of bells. "How gay it is!" she thought; "won't it be a treat!"
She plunged into a mean, small street, leading off a mean but tawdry larger one, where things hung outside the shops with their prices, written large, pinned on them, and had soon come to the house where her family lived.
She went in like a great gust of fresh air. In less than five minutes she came out, leading by the hand a little girl who, from being very much bundled up about the shoulders, and having brief petticoats above thin black legs, looked top-heavy. She was obliged to nearly run to keep up with Sally, and was trying to get out words through the breathlessness occasioned by hurrying and laughing and coming so suddenly into the frosty air.
"Oh, lemme guess, Sal, and tell me when I'm hot. Is it made of sugar?"
"No, it ain't."
"But you said it was a treat, didn't you, Sally?"
"I did that. But ain't there all sorts of treats? There's going to the circus, for instance. That hasn't any sugar."
"Is it a circus, Sally? Is it a circus?"