mistakes."

CHAPTER X

IN INKY PLIGHT

"It's perfectly fine, Glad; I think it will be the most fun ever. How
many are you going to have?"

"About thirty, Mother says. I can't ask Kitty, and Dorothy Adams. All on
the list are about as old as we are."

"Kitty'll be sorry, of course; but I don't believe mother would let her
go in the evening, anyway. She's only nine, you know."

The two friends, Marjorie and Gladys, were on their way to school, and
Gladys was telling about a Hallowe'en party she was to have the
following week. The party was to be in the evening, from seven till
nine, and, as it was unusual for the girls to have evening parties, they
looked forward to this as a great occasion. Nearly all of the children
who were to be invited went to the same school that Gladys did, so she
carried the invitations with her, and gave them around before school
began.

The invitations were written on cards which bore comical little pictures
of witches, black cats, or jack-o'-lanterns, and this was the wording:

Though the weather's bad or pleasant,
You're invited to be present
At Miss Gladys Fulton's home
On Hallowe'en. Be sure to come.
Please accept, and don't decline;
Come at seven and stay till nine.

Needless to say these cards caused great excitement among the favored
ones who received them.

Boys and girls chattered like magpies until the school-bell rang, and
then it was very hard to turn their attention to lessons.

But Marjorie was trying in earnest to be good in school, and not get
into mischief, so she resolutely put her card away in her desk, and
studied diligently at her lessons.

Indeed, so well did she study that her lesson was learned before it was
time to recite, and she had a few moments' leisure.

She took out her pretty card to admire it further, and she scrutinized
closely the funny old witch riding on a broomstick, after the approved
habit of witches.

The witch wore a high-peaked black hat, and her nose and chin were long
and pointed.

Suddenly the impulse seized Marjorie to make for herself a witch's hat.

She took from her desk a sheet of foolscap paper. But she thought a
white hat would be absurd for a witch. It must be black. How to make the
paper black was the question, but her ingenuity soon suggested a way.

She took her slate sponge, and dipping it in the ink, smeared it over
the white paper.

This produced a grayish smudge, but a second a