“Yes, for to-night; but you must don it again some time for my benefit, if for no one else’s.”
There were new sports for the next day, and the next, in most of which Harold and Herbert, the captain and Violet, Edward and Zoe, and sometimes even Grandma Elsie, took part, and that in a way to make it extremely satisfactory to the children, entering heartily into the fun and frolic, enjoying it, apparently, if not really, as much as the youngest of the company.
Almost entire harmony had prevailed until the last evening but one; then there was a slight unpleasantness.
Lulu and the five girls who were her especial guests were seated about a table engaged in playing “Letters.”
I presume the game is familiar to all my young readers. The player who can make the largest number of words wins the game, and each draws a letter in turn from a heap in the centre of the table, thrown promiscuously together, and is bound to select hap-hazard, not seeing what the letter may be till it is chosen and can not be exchanged for another more to the player’s liking.
“Dear me!” cried Sydney Dinsmore, when the game had been going on for some time, “Rosie is going to win for certain. Just see! she has more words than any body else; but I’d like to know how it is that she always hits upon a vowel, while I get nothing but consonants and of course can’t make out my words.”
“That’s a mistake, Syd,” said Rosie, coloring deeply as she spoke. “I don’t always get a vowel.”
“No, you don’t always want one, but when you do, you get it.”
“So might any body who was mean enough to peep and find out what the letter is before she takes it,” remarked Lora in a half-jesting tone; whereat the color on Rosie’s cheek deepened still more; then catching a scornful glance from Lulu’s dark eyes, she rose hastily, pushing back her chair.
“If I am suspected of such doings,” she said in tones trembling with anger and chagrin, “I’ll not play any more.”