Doris was getting to look more like the old Doris that Elizabeth Ann remembered at Aunt Ida’s school. Her cheeks were a little pinker each day, she ate more mashed potato for supper, and she hardly ever grumbled over her breakfast oatmeal any more. To be sure, she didn’t like walking to the bus—and very often when Mr. Gould stopped at the Bonnie Susie, with Catherine seated beside him in his car, Doris thought that Uncle Hiram was “mean,” because he insisted that Elizabeth Ann and Doris should walk to the bus.
“Orders are orders,” Uncle Hiram was fond of saying, “and your Uncle Doctor said plainly that you two children are to walk every day it’s possible. You don’t want to forget how to use your feet, do you, Doris?”
And then Aunt Grace would say, apparently as though she had just thought of it, “Of course, if you don’t feel strong enough to walk, Doris, your uncle might be willing for you to ride; but if you don’t feel well you’ll have to go to bed earlier every night and I couldn’t think of letting you go to Catherine’s party.”
That always made Doris declare hastily that she didn’t mind walking at all. Elizabeth Ann, who remembered how Uncle Doctor made his sick people take walks whether they wanted to or not, was glad that Aunt Grace was there to remind Doris about the party. For Doris could be rather stubborn, and she might say she wouldn’t walk to the bus—only she never in the wide world would say that if she knew she couldn’t go to Catherine’s party.
For Catherine was planning a wonderful party—the best and largest, so she said, that she had ever given, and it would be on Hallowe’en, which is, of course one of the best times in the whole of the year for party fun.
“I’m going to have prizes for the nicest costumes and everything,” announced Catherine importantly. “You all have to dress up and wear masks, so no one will know who you are.”
Catherine saw no reason for keeping her party plans a secret and she early announced that she meant to invite her entire class to her house, except Roger Calendar.
“I don’t see any reason why I have to ask him,” said Catherine, “I don’t like him and anyway he won’t have anything fit to wear.”
But Catherine soon found out that she couldn’t invite the entire class and leave one out. Miss Owen said that would be a dreadful thing to do and Catherine’s own daddy, when he heard of the plan, said he would not let such a thing happen.
“If you plan to invite the entire class, you’ll have to invite every one of them,” said Mr. Gould to his daughter, firmly. “I won’t have anyone deliberately slighted; I like Roger Calendar, and the boy gets little enough fun. Ask him to your party.”