d let you know to-night."

But I was surprised that night to have Mother say I could go, for I'd
about given up hope, after all that talk at the breakfast-table. And
she said something else that surprised me, too. She said she'd like to
know Paul Mayhew herself; that she always wanted to know the friends
of her little girl. And she told me to ask him to call the next
evening and play checkers or chess with me.

Happy? I could scarcely contain myself for joy. And when the next
evening came bringing Paul, and Mother, all prettily dressed as if
he were really truly company, came into the room and talked so
beautifully to him, I was even more entranced. To be sure, it did
bother me a little that Paul laughed so much, and so loudly, and that
he couldn't seem to find anything to talk about only himself, and what
he was doing, and what he was going to do. Some way, he had never
seemed like that at school. And I was afraid Mother wouldn't like
that.

All the evening I was watching and listening with her eyes and her
ears everything he did, everything he said. I so wanted Mother to like
him! I so wanted Mother to see how really fine and splendid and noble
he was. But that evening--Why _couldn't_ he stop talking about the
prizes he'd won, and the big racing car he'd just ordered for next
summer? There was nothing fine and splendid and noble about that. And
_were_ his finger nails always so dirty?

Why, Mother would think--

Mother did not stay in the room all the time; but she was in more or
less often to watch the game; and at half-past nine she brought in
some little cakes and lemonade as a surprise. I thought it was lovely;
but I could have shaken Paul when he pretended to be afraid of it, and
asked Mother if there was a stick in it.

The idea--Mother! A stick!

I just knew Mother wouldn't like that. But if she didn't, she never
showed a thing in her face. She just smiled, and said no, there wasn't
any stick in it; and passed the cakes.

When he had gone I remember I didn't like to meet Mother's eyes, and I
didn't ask her how she liked Paul Mayhew. I kept right on talking fast
about something else. Some way, I didn't want Mother to talk then, for
fear of what she would say.

And Mother didn't say anything about Paul Mayhew--then. But only a few
days later she told me to invite him again to the house (this time to
a chafing-dish supper), and to ask Carrie Heywood and Fred Small, too.

We had a beautiful time, only