“Is she going to give a party?” asked Elizabeth Ann, who could ask questions and scoop up jack stones at the same time.
“Catherine is always giving parties,” Mattie informed her. “She lives in a great big house, and her mother lets her do anything she pleases.”
The bell rang for the end of recess just then, and the rest of the morning Elizabeth Ann was too busy trying to learn to write nicely, to think much about parties, or girls whose mothers allowed them to do anything they pleased.
Mattie had explained to Elizabeth Ann and Doris about the lunch hour. In the winter she said, there was a large, warm, light room in the basement with tables, where the pupils ate their lunches. But as long as the weather remained warm and pleasant—as it usually did throughout September—the children were supposed to eat their lunches outdoors.
“Miss Owen,” Mattie had explained, “is crazy about fresh air.”
At noon, when the bell rang, Elizabeth Ann was starving. She was sure she had never been so hungry before in her life.
“Come on, we have to hurry, or we don’t get a tree,” said Mattie, who certainly knew all about school.
Elizabeth Ann grasped her lunch box and caught hold of Doris’s hand.
“Hurry!” she said, and helter skelter across the play ground they ran, to a row of apple trees that were behind the building.
Boys and girls were climbing into these trees—you know an apple tree is close to the ground and easy to climb—and though Elizabeth Ann and Mattie both had to tug and pull Doris, to get her up into the tree, they all agreed, once they were settled, that it was a lovely place to eat lunch.