There came a ring at the door bell.
"Here they come! Here they come!" cried Flossie.
"Let me answer, too," cried Freddie, and they both hurried through the front hall to greet the first guest at their party.
CHAPTER XIII
AN UNPLEASANT SURPRISE
Quickly, after the first guests had arrived came the others. Nellie
Parks, Grace Lavine friends of Nan, and Willie Porter and his sister
Sadie, came first, and Freddie and Flossie let them in, the Porter
children being some of their best-liked playmates.
All the children wore their best clothes, and for a time they were a bit stiff and unnatural, standing shyly about in corners, against the walls, or sitting on chairs.
The boys seemed to all crowd together in one part of the room, and the girls in another. Flossie and Freddie, Nan and Bert, were so busy answering the door that they did not notice this at first.
But Aunt Sarah, their mother's sister, who had come over to help Mrs. Bobbsey, looking in the parlor and library, saw what the trouble was.
"My!" she cried, with a good-natured laugh, as she noticed how "stiff" the children were. "This will never do. You're not that way at school, I don't believe. Come, be lively. Mix up—play games. Pretend this is recess at school, and make as much noise as you like."