“I never knew it to fail!” she said. “Just as everything is fixed, and we’re recovering from you’re being here for the Holadays, you come back and stir up a lot of trouble. What brought you, anyhow?”
“Meazles.”
She snached up her ball gown.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll see that you’re quarentined, Miss Barbara, all right. And if you think you’re going to slip downstairs tonight after dinner and worm yourself into this party, I’ll show you.”
She flounsed out, and shortly afterwards mother took a minute from the Florest, and came upstairs.
“I do hope you are not going to be troublesome, Barbara,” she said. “You are too young to understand, but I want everything to go well tonight, and Leila ought not to be worried.”
“Can’t I dance a little?”
“You can sit on the stairs and watch.” She looked fidgity. “I—I’ll send up a nice dinner, and you can put on your dark blue, with a fresh collar, and—it ought to satisfy you, Barbara, that you are at home and posibly have brought the meazles with you, without making a lot of fuss. When you come out——”
“Oh, very well,” I murmured, in a resined tone. “I don’t care enough about it to want to dance with a lot of Souses anyhow.”