“Are you ready, Mary?” A bewitching, brown-eyed vision in white pranced in upon Mary as she was slowly adjusting the soft loops of her wide, white ribbon sash. “Let me tie your sash.” Marjorie’s nimble fingers set themselves to work. “There you are. You do look so perfectly sweet in white. Now smile and say prettily, ‘Thank you for them kind words, Miss Marjorie.’ That’s what Delia always says when she dresses up and I tell her how fine she looks.”
Marjorie’s buoyant spirits were so irresistible as to bring the coveted light into Mary’s mournful eyes. “Forward, march! Here we go.” Seizing Mary gently by the shoulders she marched her down the hall to the stairway. “Break ranks,” she ordered. “The gallant regiment can’t afford to tumble downstairs.”
“Halt!” came the order, as Mary reached the lower hall a step ahead of her commander. “We will now make an invasion on the living room. Two’s right, march!”
Mary obediently marched. Of her own accord she came to an abrupt halt. “Oh!” she gasped. Her amazed exclamation was drowned in a chorus of gleeful shouts as seven very lively apparitions closed in around her.
“Charlie never said a word!” shrieked a high, triumphant voice. “We comed to see you. Hooray!” A small, joyful figure hurled itself straight into Mary’s arms. She stooped and hugged him close, her golden head bent to the youngster’s. Straightening, she glimpsed the affectionate circle of girls through a mist of unbidden tears. “I’m so glad and so surprised to see all of you,” she faltered. “And you knew it all the time!” She caught Marjorie’s hand.
“Of course I knew it. Now we are even. You gave me a surprise party once, so I thought I’d return the compliment,” laughed Marjorie. “I could hardly keep it to myself, though. Every time I looked at you I wanted to say, ‘Cheer up, the best is yet to come.’”
“It’s a good thing it wasn’t long coming,” retorted Jerry Macy. “I never knew how much I liked to talk until I had to keep still.”
“You must have slipped into the house like shadows,” declared Mary happily. Her sad expression had quite vanished with the unexpected honor that had been done her. She felt that, after all, she held some small place in the affections of Marjorie’s intimate friends, and the cloud of doubt that had obsessed her rolled away.
“We did do that arriving stunt rather well,” was Harriet Delaney’s complacent comment. “Of course, Susie giggled. We expected she would, though. The rest of us were above reproach.”
“No wonder I giggled,” defended Susan Atwell. “If you had been the last one in line you’d have laughed, too. You girls looked as if you were trying to walk on eggshells, and when Jerry crossed the room in about three steps, it was too much for me.” Susan’s cheerful chuckle broke forth anew and went the rounds.