"You need not ask me if you don't want to," said Dora, pouting. "I don't care for going to your old party!"
"But we do want you, and you would like to come," said Bessie good-naturedly; "for it is going to be very nice, and we are to have a magic-lantern."
"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" said Fanny Leroy, clapping her hands. "I never saw a magic-lantern; I'll be sure to come."
"Now, there's another of you," said Maggie, in rather an aggrieved tone. "You ought not to say you'll come till you're invited. Bessie and I are going to send you an invitation all written in a note, and you must answer it in the same way, and not say you'll come before-time. I'm sorry I told you, if you act this way about it."
"When did you say it was to be?" asked Nellie.
"Next Tuesday," said Maggie: "the first of May. That's Bessie's birthday."
"And that is the day Miss Ashton's uncle is going to give the prizes," said Gracie Howard.
"Why, so it is!" said Lily Norris. "What a very 'markable day it will be for us!"
Here the bell rang, and the young voices were all hushed. But, after school was opened, the children found that one of the expected "remarkable" events would not, after all, take place on the first day of May.
"Children," said Miss Ashton, "a letter came from my uncle this morning, saying that he had been called out of town on very important business, and so could not be here on Tuesday to present the prizes. But on the following Thursday he hopes to be at home, and wishes to have all the compositions handed to him on the evening of that day, so that he may read them before Friday, when he will be here. We shall have no regular school on that day, but a little examination will take the place of the usual lessons; and you may tell such of your friends as would like to come that we will be happy to see them."