Ruthie’s absence took some of the brightness out of the afternoon, and as he drew nearer and nearer to Miss Lavinia’s house Tommy became unaccountably shy. To add to his embarrassment when he reached the familiar door he found it shut, instead of standing invitingly open as on ordinary school days. At the sight of the closed door the last particle of courage left him, and he wished to run home fast and have tea quietly with Mammy. Yet something urged him to be brave, and he screwed up his hand tight, ready to hammer on the door. It was just at this point that a gentleman walking down the street, seeing a small boy and a high knocker, crossed over to Tommy and gave a loud rat-tat to help him. Smiling he passed on, leaving Tommy more deeply embarrassed than before.
When Miss Lavinia, wearing her best black silk dress and a gold locket, herself answered the knock Tommy stood still, not quite knowing what to do next. When she stooped and kissed him he flushed deeply, then, with a broad smile of anticipation, stood flat against the wall in the narrow passage while she closed the door.
Miss Lavinia, who was really just as shy and nervous as her guests, led the way into the schoolroom, and here the sense of unfamiliarity deepened. The desks and maps had gone and the room was hung with evergreens. Round the fire stood children whom Tommy saw every single day and never before had he been at a loss in entering upon a conversation with any one of them. This afternoon, however, he found nothing to say, and they all looked at one-another in silence.
Miss Lavinia felt that the party was a failure and grew more and more nervous as the silent moments were ticked out by the school-room clock. She went away presently to speak to Mrs. Harris about the tea. Mrs Harris was the woman who came in for an hour now and again to help with the rough work, and she had volunteered to be there this evening just to see Miss Lavinia through.
A very genteel knock at the door put an end to Miss Lavinia’s superfluous directions. There was hushed expectancy among the groups of children gathered round the fire when she ushered into the schoolroom Ruthie’s mother leading Ruthie by the hand.
Ruthie was the only child who had been brought.
In the very middle of the room she stood while her mother freed her from the folds of a big Paisley shawl. Then she was revealed to nineteen pairs of admiring eyes—a little girl in a white silk frock; the only white silk frock in the room.
“It is to save her Sunday dress,” Ruthie’s mother explained to Miss Lavinia. “You see this will wash.”
She then lifted her daughter on to a table at the far end of the room, and with a whispered injunction that she must on no account mess up her clothes she left.
The spell that until now had held the children was broken. Half envious, half admiring they gathered round the table and looked at Ruthie in a real party frock. Her hair had been in so many plaits for so many hours that it stood out crisply all round her head. But the greatest wonder of all was her gloves. Ruthie was actually wearing gloves! White cotton gloves they were, held up at the top by a band of black elastic; a band so tight that it had already made a groove in each little arm between the elbow and the wrist.