“Well, then, I have,” Adele confessed. “Last week, when I was over visiting with dear old Granny Dorset, I was telling her about one of our parties, and she said, rather wistfully, ‘Parties are just for the young folks, aren’t they, Della? And yet, I do believe that I would enjoy a party more now than I ever did, but I guess I’ve been to my last.’ And then she sighed, which was so unlike cheerful Granny Dorset, that I decided right then and there to give a party for her, and I want you all to help. Will you?”
“Will we?” Bertha Angel exclaimed. “Indeed we will! I think it is so sad when the grandmothers are kept away by themselves and are not invited to share in the good times. My dear old grandma told me that at eighty her heart felt as young as it ever had, and that she enjoyed having a pretty new dress as much as she did when she was sixteen.”
“Oh, yes, and that’s another thing,” Adele said. “Granny Dorset told me that she would have a seventieth birthday one week from Saturday, and I asked, ‘Granny, if you could have just what you wish for a birthday present, what would it be?’ And, girls, you never could guess what she replied, not in a thousand years.”
“Well, then, we might as well give up first as last,” Peggy Pierce declared.
“Indeed you might,” Adele laughed. “I’m sure I never would have guessed it. Granny Dorset said that the dearest desire of her heart for the past ten years had been to possess a purple silk dress with lace in the neck and sleeves.”
“And she hasn’t been able to have it, of course,” Gertrude declared. “They belong to our church, and father calls there, and he said that the son-in-law is rather shiftless and the daughter has to scrimp in every way to provide for her own three children and Granny Dorset, but she is so proud that she won’t accept a bit of help.”
“Well,” Adele continued, “I thought that we would find out what other old people are still living in Sunnyside, who were young when Granny Dorset was, and then we’d invite them to a surprise birthday-party for her, and if we have money enough in the bank, we might buy her the purple silk dress.”
“Alas and alack!” Bertha exclaimed. “The bank is quite empty. Nothing has been put into it since we bought the presents for the orphans.”
“I’ll tell you what!” Peggy Pierce exclaimed. “Let’s start an account at the Bee Hive. Dad will be glad to do it for us, and we can buy the purple silk at cost. Miss Meadly, who does our sewing, will make the dress for us and wait for her pay until we have the money.”
“And as for the lace,” Rosamond Wright exclaimed, “my mother has ever and ever so much of it, and I know she will gladly donate enough for the neck and sleeves.”