Then Norah exclaimed at once, "That's Wilfrid's voice!" She pushed aside the hood. "Why, you're Wilfrid!" she cried, amazed.
"And you're April Billy!" he shouted with glee, throwing off the long cloak. "You said you'd do anything and give anything for a reward, and now you've had to do so without one!" And, bursting out laughing, he ran off with the sum and the paint-box.
Norah sat down on a footstool and burst out crying. She was angry and disappointed, and she sobbed bitterly as she thought how she had been tricked into doing Wilfrid's horrid sum, how she had been made to give away her treasured paint-box which he had envied for months, and, worst of all a thousand times, how she had no fairy godmother after all!
PART II
THE LITTLE FLOWER GIRL
But Norah was a plucky little girl, and at times a wise little girl. And, moreover, she had a sort of feeling that it all served her right for being silly, and dissatisfied, and too selfish to lend her paint-box. Wilfrid certainly was a tease, but he was really a dear good brother, and always lent her his things, and did his best to champion her and get her out of a scrape.
Still, she felt she would like to pay him out, all the same—he'd had such a lovely time being fairy godmother!
So she decided, like the weather, that it was not grown-up to cry, and she dried her eyes. Then all at once she smiled and laughed outright. For an idea had come to her, which she proceeded to carry out. She certainly began to do some rather queer things.
First of all she took off her shoes and stockings. Then she untied the pink ribbon which kept her hair tidy, so that her curls fell in a towsled mass about her flushed cheeks. Next she took off her pink overall pinafore, which she hid away; and gathering her white frock over her head, displayed a short red-and-white striped petticoat.
Running quickly about the room she took all the violets from the vases, strewed some of them in the fold of her frock, which she held together in one hand, and put together a large bunch of the flowers for her other hand.