OLIVE'S TEA-PARTY.
"Mamma," said Olive one day, "I want to have a tea party."
"Well, dear," mamma answered, "I dare say it could be managed. You must talk to Cara and Louie about it, and settle whom you would all like to ask."
"No, no," said Olive, "I don't mean that. I won't have my sisters, mamma. They like to ask big ones, and I want a party for my own self, and no big ones. I want to fix everything myself, and I won't have Cara and Louie telling us what to eat at tea, and what games to play at. You may tell aunty to 'avite them to her house that day, mamma, and let me have my own party; else I won't have it at all."
Olive was eight. She was the youngest of three. It oftens happens that the "youngest of three" fancies herself "put upon," especially when the two elders are very near of an age and together in everything. But this sudden stand for independence was new in Olive. Mamma looked at her curiously. Had some foolish person been putting nonsense in her little girl's head?
"Cara and Louie are always kind to you about your little pleasures, Olive," she said. "I don't understand why you should all at once want to do without them."
Olive wriggled. "But I do," she said. "Lily Farquhar says her big sisters spoil her parties so, and they call her and her friends 'the babies,' and laugh at them."