Page:Carroll Rankin--Dandelion Cottage.djvu/315



HE girls, a little uneasy lest their alarmingly interested parents should insist on crooking and serving the entire dinner, were both relieved and perplexed to find that the grown-ups, while perfectly willing to help with the dinner provided that they could work in their own kitchens, flatly declined the most urgent invitations to enter the cottage the afternoon or evening of the party.

It was incomprehensible. Until noon of the very day of the feast the parents and Aunty Jane had paid the girls an almost embarrassing number of visits. Now, when the girls really wanted them and actually gave each of them a very special invitation, each one unexpectedly held aloof. For, as the hour approached, the girls momentarily 280