Presently she excused herself, and beckoned me to follow her out of the room.

Without a word, or even a glance of reproach, she bade me run across the street and ask my Aunt Rachel and her daughter Milly to come over at once and help her prepare for the unexpected guests.

They were both of them quick, capable women and fine housekeepers, and 'flew around,' as they expressed it, in such a marvellous way that at the proper time the customary feast was spread.
"It did look so good! I walked around the table, my mouth watering as I looked at the tarts and marmalade and spiced buns, and all the other tempting dishes.

Mother watched me do it, and then, just before she invited the ladies out to the table, she sent me off to bed without a morsel to eat,--not even a spoonful of mush and milk.
"I lay in an adjoining room, listening to the clatter of knives and forks, and the ladylike hum of conversation, and knew that the good things were slowly but surely disappearing, and that I could not have a taste.

I was so hungry and disappointed that I cried myself to sleep.
That disappointment and the lecture which followed next morning was punishment enough, and you may be sure that that was the last time I ever invited my mother's friends on my own responsibility." Mrs.Brewster paused amid the girls' laughing exclamations, and just then Mrs.Sherman came in from the train, hot and dusty, and her arms full of little packages.