“Mercy, I don’t know. I felt like a mouse, being played with by the cat.”
“Cat is what she is, Ann. What she doesn’t know, she makes up.”
“She certainly has imagination!”
Mrs. Lewis had succeeded in annoying Ann thoroughly. Values in the neighborhood went down for Ann immediately. “I’m glad I don’t have to live around here,” she thought, for at present, under the spell of an insincere member of the community, she had no thought for the true friends. The suggestion about Maurice was too absurd! Had not her mother just told her to the contrary? However, she wished that since Mrs. Lewis had told her that much, she had had opportunity to finish, if for nothing more than for Ann to tell her that it was not so.
Several of the girls came out and stood around Ann, some of them, like her, finishing their own little lunch. “I oughtn’t to have eaten a bit of ice-cream,” said one of them, a pretty brunette of about Ann’s age. “Your mother wants me to sing pretty soon and I never can sing so well if I have eaten it.”
“Take a cup of hot coffee, Lou, to warm up your throat,” Suzanne suggested.
“That would be the other extreme.”
“You are to play her accompaniment, Ann,” announced Suzanne. “That is what your mother wanted you for.”
“I hope that it is an easy one,” said Ann, putting the last bit of soft frosting in her mouth.
“It is,” Louise assured her.