three more girls!" mused Polly anxiously. "I can't leave out
Aimee Gentil, and I meant to ask Mabel Camp and Mary Pender." She
paused.

"That just makes it." Her mother's pencil was waiting.

"But I don't know what to do," Polly sighed. "There's Gladys Osborne,
I ought to invite her. She's Betty's intimate friend, and I'm afraid
she'll feel hurt to be skipped. And Ilga!" She drew another sigh.

"Ilga Barron?"

Polly nodded, her forehead wrinkled over the problem. "She has been
good to me lately, and she'll expect an invitation. Still Mabel and
Mary don't have half the fun that Ilga has, and I want them. Oh, dear,
having parties is hard work!"

Mrs. Dudley smiled sympathetically, but offered no direct assistance.

"Suppose we leave the girls, and take up the boys. Then we can come
back, and things may look clearer."

"All right." Polly welcomed a respite from the struggle between
loyalty to her old hospital friends and duty to her new acquaintances.

The second list was soon complete, with former patients of the
convalescent ward outnumbering the others.

"I want Otto Kriloff and Moses Cohn and those boys to have a good time
for once," Polly unnecessarily explained, and then turned to the
matter which had been dropped.

"I think I'll have Aimee and Gladys and Ilga," she at length decided.
And so the names went down.

"I will write the invitations this evening," promised Mrs. Dudley; but
in less than an hour came Mrs. Jocelyn with a proposal which precluded
all previous arrangements and more pleasantly solved Polly's difficult
problem.

"Leonora and I are in a quandary," began the little lady who was used
to having her own way, "and we hope you will help us out. With Polly's
birthday coming on the eighteenth and Leonora's on the twentieth, and
we planning for separate parties, it is strange I didn't think of it
sooner. Probably it wouldn't have occurred to me now, only that the
invitation list has been giving us no end of bother."

Mrs. Dudley and Polly smiled appreciatively to each other.

"We reached the end of it," Mrs. Jocelyn continued, "long before
Leonora was through choosing, and she was distressed at thought of
leaving out so many. It is all nonsense, this restricting the number
of guests to the years; but if it must be so I think we had better
combine. Then we can double the list, and nobody will have to be
invited twice. Polly and Leonora ought to be satisfied with forty-four
friends--no, for