This idea was hailed with rapture, and was about to be carried out, but just as Jack had reached the front gate Mrs. Gresham's voice was heard from the window.
"Jack! Jack!" she called.
"Yes, Aunt Margaret," replied Jack, pausing.
"If you are going out, don't go near Mrs. Lane's house," said his aunt.
So that plan was never fulfilled. Luncheon made one of the hours pass a little better, but after luncheon Trix's restlessness became uncontrollable. She wandered in and out of the house; she accepted Amy's proposition to make a visit to the church and pray for her mother, but, as Amy remarked, "did not seem to feel any better after it." She quarrelled with Jack, and almost fell out with Margery, for she teased Tommy Traddles till that confiding cat fled in terror, and altogether led her friends such a life that no prisoners could long for freedom more eagerly than they longed for three o'clock to come. It never occurred to one of the four to lay their trouble before Mrs. Gresham, and she being busy did not discover its symptoms. Children are such queer little beings that they will sometimes suffer all sorts of misery without a word, and in this case the feeling that there was a secret to be kept from them made them unwilling to betray their knowledge of it.
At last it was ten minutes to three, and Trix could go. Amy, Margery, and Jack accompanied her.
"I don't smell ether," remarked Amy as they went in the door.
Katie, smiling with all her might, showed them into the parlor. Mrs. Lane, looking very bright and happy, stood by the window; she turned at once, and came swiftly forward to meet the children.
"Look, Trix!" she said, and pointed to a piano standing in all the glory of new polish over at the end of the room.