“Yes, for a while, anyhow, as long as you ought to stay out. I wish you were going to be at home, Betty!”
“I don’t,” frankly replied Betty, who was in front of the mirror seeing how she looked in the small black mask, from whose openings her eyes twinkled. “But you will have lots of fun, and if you give Amy Lou a grand little outing, she’ll be angelic when she comes in; for Mother’s going to have a little Hallowe’en party for her, all by herself, with a great surprise!”
As Betty spoke, she looked down at the tiny gypsy, very solemn and important now. Amy Lou smiled up, however, with a smile much like that with which her older sister was regarding her. “Give me a name, Betty! Give me a name!” she demanded, “a gypsy name!”
“Oh, you’re the Queen of the gypsies, the Princess Maria Sophia Cleopatra Amy Lou.”
“All right,” shouted Amy Lou, running out of the bedroom to follow Doris, who was ready to start.
Betty’s costume was not one as hastily fabricated as those of the other children for her mother, realizing that she was to mingle with other boys and girls who would be well costumed, had gone to considerable trouble to make her “little girl” pretty. Betty was Titania of the fairies and was airily dressed in white with “spangles” appropriately attached, Roman pearls around her young neck, several tinkling bracelets on her arms and a few tiny silver bells so disposed that they sounded a little as she walked. And now her mother brought a warm wrap for her shoulders and the long, shrouding domino that she was to wear over all. What fun!
There followed the ride to the party in Mr. Lee’s car and a merry good-bye to him as she joined the company of shrouded figures or funnily costumed ones that were descending from automobiles, or entering the gates, or being ushered in at the door of the house. My, it was going to be a large party, but Marcella had told her at school that she had decided not to have it confined to juniors at all. “I owe such a lot of the girls, and so I’m going to have—everybody!”
It was not quite that, to be sure, but the upstairs rooms were full where wraps were being laid aside. How funny not to know a soul to speak to! But Carolyn had told her what her costume would be and she had confided what hers would be. Perhaps Carolyn knew about some of the others.
“Oh, aren’t you sweet!” squealed somebody in a high, assumed voice. “Look, girls, here’s the queen of the fairies. Now, who is she? Gilt hair, cute chin and a dimple or two!”
Betty laughed at the description. So she had gilt hair, had she? That hair had been arranged as she never wore it before. She did hope that she wouldn’t be found out right away; yet this girl was a tall one and nobody she knew, she imagined. But she picked up her fairy wand, laid aside while she removed her wraps, and waved it regally toward the speaker. She, too, tried to disguise her voice as she said, “The fairy queen bestows honors and gifts for tonight!”