CHAPTER XIV.—THE HALLOWE’EN HOUSE PARTY.
“My Dear Miss Campbell:
Do you think your nice young charge would be bored by a visit to our lonely old home in the country? Percival has set his heart on giving a Hallowe’en house party for some of his particular friends, and I find Wilhelmina’s name the very first on the list. I shall promise to look after her in every way exactly as if she were my own child, guard her from draughts, see that she has plenty of covering on her bed and that she wears her overshoes if the ground is damp.
My boy would be quite inconsolable, and I should too, my dear friend, if she is not to be among our guests. I cannot offer many inducements except the pleasure which young people always bring to a house, but I candidly believe that Percival would give up the idea if she should not be able to come.
Most cordially yours,
Antoinette Juliana St. Clair.”
Miss Campbell smiled as she handed the note to Billie one morning at the breakfast table. The two fanciful names of the good-natured, cordial widow always amused her.
“The lonely old home in the country,” so modestly referred to, was one of the finest places in the county, and nothing was more coveted by the young people in West Haven than an invitation to one of Percival’s house parties, where everything that the widow and her son could devise was done for the amusement of the guests.
“Of course you must go, dear. I wouldn’t have you miss it for worlds. The change will do you good. I have been troubled about you lately, my child, and if this invitation had not come, I was going to insist on your seeing the doctor. I don’t think your liver has been behaving itself. You have been so out of sorts. But perhaps a little amusement will be better for you than a calomel pill.”