Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/106

 with beads and trinkets from Woolworth's until it became a miscellaneous jingle of flamboyant color and sparkle eclipsing the reserved inscription of exclusive love.

Chapter 9

THE SLEIGHRIDE PARTY

the brass doorknob of Aunt Mabel's home to give herself tingling pleasure with the electric shock she had discovered the first freezing dry day in Congress. As usual Vida was waiting. They walked and slid on the icy snow with small steps so as not to fall, hands over ears, teeth clenched against a tongue-biting jar from snowballs pitched by horrid little boys.

"Will your mother let you go?"

"I didn't tell her it was a sleighride. I said a few of us girls were going to Emmy's for popcorn balls. I'm glad now we have no phone so Ma can't call and find out."

Harry, a sophomore at Fourth High, had organized a sleighride party. He and five other boys chipped in and hired a driver and sleigh with two horses from Tyson's Livery. The boys and girls were all from high school except Lucy and Vida. Lucy had told Harry her friend Vida must be invited.

"Okay," grumbled Harry, "if you want her along, but she won't fit. She's just a kid."

Emmy, Dora, Dottie, and Birdie were as a phalanx against the 8th grade invaders. At Birdie's where they were gathered the high school girls examined Lucy's Alice-blue cape coat and bonnet edged with white rabbit fur and hooted.

"Who do you thing you are, an Easter Rabbit, or Lillian Gish all dressed up and no place to go?"

Lucy laughed good-naturedly. She didn't have a mackinaw like the other girls. Of course mackinaws were warm but she'd rather be cold and save her posing-money so she and Mother could go to New York City.

The uninvited on Birdie's street breathed peepholes in frosty 94