"I did whip her rather hard," confessed Mrs. Gibbs half-apologetically. "I was real vexed with her when I found her with her fingers in the jar! But there, she's been wanting a smacking long enough, and I expect it'll do her good," she finished up cheerfully.
"Poor Lu! And she'd been so looking forward to to-night!" Toni's soft heart was wrung for the culprit. "Did she have any tea, Auntie?"
"Not she. I sent her straight off to bed." Mrs. Gibbs' tone was uneasy now. "And she didn't eat no dinner to-day, she was that excited!"
"Oh, poor Lu! Can't I take her up something, Aunt Jean?"
Mrs. Gibbs appeared to consider the question, though everyone at the table knew very well that her mother-heart had relented towards her darling long ago.
"Well, I don't mind if you do take her just a bite," she said presently; and amid much laughter and sympathetic joking a tray was fitted out with various delicacies and entrusted to the willing hands of Antonia.
Up she went, finding Lu's room in darkness, Lu herself lying sullenly awake, refusing to be comforted.
Her plump little person had strongly resented the force of her mother's stern hand; but her vanity was more severely hurt by the fact that the visitors downstairs would know both the cause and the method of her punishment. Therefore she turned away and pretended to be asleep; but Toni's gentle hand pulling down the clothes, Toni's soft voice murmuring of forgiveness and compensation were too much for the child.
She sat up, disclosing the tear-stains on her round cheeks in the light of the candle Toni carried, and allowed herself to be comforted with alternate bites of chicken and sips of lemonade.
"That's better!" Toni gave her a plate of trifle, and brushed back the tangled curls from the hot little forehead. "Now eat that up and then I must run away. They're waiting for me, you know, so when you've finished you must give me a kiss and go straight to sleep."