"Are you going to invite Lily to your party?" asked mamma.
"Yes, of course. She's my best friend, and she knows lots of games."
"Very well. Then fix your day and invite your friends, and I will take care that your sisters don't interfere."
Olive looked very pleased. "I think next Wednesday would do," she said. "It's our half-holiday, and if Cara will help me on Tuesday evening I can get my lessons done, so that I needn't do any on Wednesday. It's howid to have to do lessons after a party," added Olive, with a languid air.
But mamma took her up more sharply than she expected. "Nay, nay, Olive," she said, "that won't do. If your sisters are to have none of the pleasure of your party, you can't expect them to take any trouble. You must manage your lessons as best you can."
Olive pouted, but did not dare to say anything. Truth to tell, her lessons at no time sat very heavily on her mind.
"It won't be my fault if I don't do them on Wednesday," she said to herself. "It'll be Cara's, and—and mamma's—so I don't care."
She found the writing the invitations more trouble than she had expected, and more than once did she wish she could have applied for help to Louie, whose handwriting was so clear and pretty, and who possessed such "ducky" little sheets of note-paper of all colours, with a teapot and "come early" in one corner. Olive's epistles were rather a sight to be seen; nearly all of them were blotted, and the spelling of some of her friends' names was peculiar, to say the least. Still they did their purpose, for in the course of the next day or two the little hostess received answers, all accepting her "kind invitation," except poor Amabel Pryce, who had so bad a sore-throat that there was no chance of her being able to go out by Wednesday. And in one note—from a little girl called Maggie Vernon—was something which did not suit Olive's present frame of mind at all.
"Harriot and I," wrote Maggie—Harriot was Maggie's sister—"will be so pleased to come. We love a party at your house, because your big sisters are always so kind."