Little Alise, hopping among them like a fairy, announced that this was her very own party, and Miss Ellsworth, smiling at the little girl whom she so loved, agreed. “Yes, this is Alise’s birthday, and when I asked whom she would like to invite to a party, she replied that she wanted all of the nice girls at Linden Hall.”
A week after this jolly affair, rehearsals on the play were begun in real earnest, and Katrina, who now laughed as often as the others, made a very graceful and pretty summer girl, but, when at last the evening arrived, it was Carol’s truly amusing impersonation of an Irish maid that sent the delighted audience into gale after gale of laughter. When it was all over, she was presented with a huge bouquet of pink carnations tied with wide green ribbons.
“Well, it’s certainly a good thing that I was too snobbish to take that part,” Katrina exclaimed when every one had surged up and congratulated the beaming maid. “The play wouldn’t have been a success at all without you as Norah.”
Carol gave this little maiden a friendly hug and then darted away to take off the wig and paint.
Midwinter exams were not so dreadful after all, and each dweller of Apple-Blossom Alley emerged from them with high marks, and then satchels were packed and away they went to their homes for the holidays.
The “Jolly Pirates” were at the station to meet the train when it pulled into Sunnyside, and after much laughter and joyous greetings, the several sleighs in waiting bore the girls away to their homes and devoted families.
A round of gay times had been planned to entertain them, and almost before they realized that it was possible, they were back in Linden Hall and again at their studies.
“Girls!” Adele cried one day as she skipped into Apple-Blossom Alley, “I am possessed of a sudden and soaring ambition. I have decided to compete for the French essay medal which is awarded by Madame Vandeheuton every year on the first day of February.”
“Oh, Della, you’d have to study terribly hard to win that. Marie Le Clerc is also trying for it, and she is of French descent,” Betty Burd declared.
“‘Nothing venture, nothing have,’” Doris Drexel chanted.