“Well, daughter, I think you know that I dearly love to gratify you?”
“Yes, papa, oh, yes, indeed! and I’ll try not to want to go if you don’t think it best.”
“That is my own dear child,” he said, smiling fondly upon her. “I have been thinking that you and Annis might enjoy having a little company of your young friends here to spend a week or so of the holidays. What do you say to that?”
“Papa! what a nice idea!” she cried, clapping her hands.
“Your mamma and I will probably have some older guests visiting us at the same time. Mrs. and Mr. Travilla, I hope, among others. I trust they will enjoy it, and feel content with a shorter visit from us than they so kindly proposed, and that Annis and you will be satisfied also.”
“I shall, papa, and I presume she will. But please tell me whom I may invite.”
“You may first tell me whom you wish to ask. We will make out a list together,” taking a note-book and pencil from his pocket. “We have some weeks before us, but it may be as well to send out our invitations at once, lest we should be forestalled by some one else. Now then, what names have you to suggest?”
“Carrie Howard, Lucy Carrington, Isabel Carleton, Mary Leslie, Flora Arnott, and—papa, am I to ask anybody from Roselands?”
“No; I shall attend to that. We are all to dine there day after to-morrow, and I shall tell Enna she will be welcome to come, and stay the week out, if she behaves nicely, but that I shall keep an eye on her and send her home if she shows her usual ill-temper and disposition to domineer. Your mamma and I will invite your grandpa and his wife and your Aunt Adelaide. Louise and Lora will not, I presume, care to come—your party being too young, and ours too old for them.”
“But Walter, papa?”