en you'll come?" cried Carrie, confidently. "We live out of town--on
the Buckshot Road. Anybody will tell you."

"I suppose the Kenway girls will know," said Neale, doubtfully. "I can
go along with them."

Carrie was a girl who thought quickly. She had really promised Trix
Severn that she would not invite Ruth and Agnes Kenway to her party; but
how could she get out of doing just that under these circumstances?

"Of course," she cried, with apparently perfect frankness. "I sincerely
hope they'll both come. And I can depend upon you to be there, Mr.
O'Neil?"

Then she skated straight away and found Ruth and Agnes and invited them
for Friday night in a most graceful way.

"I wanted to ask you girls personally instead of sending a formal
invite," she said, warmly. "You being new girls, you know. You'll come?
That's so kind of you! I shouldn't feel that the party would be a
success if you Corner House girls were not there."

So that is how they got the invitation; but at the time the Kenway
sisters did not suspect how near they came to not being invited at all
to the Christmas party.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BARN DANCE

Such a "hurly-burly" as there was about the old Corner House on Friday
afternoon! Everybody save Aunt Sarah was on the _qui vive_ over the
Christmas party--for this was the first important social occasion to
which any of the Kenway sisters had been invited since coming to Milton
to live.

Miss Titus, that famous gossip and seamstress, had been called in again,
and the girls all had plenty of up-to-date winter frocks made. Miss
Titus' breezy conversation vastly interested Dot, who often sat silently
nursing her Alice-doll in the sewing room, ogling the seamstress
wonderingly as her tongue ran on. "'N so, you see, he says to her," was
a favorite phrase with Miss Titus.

Mrs. MacCall said the seamstress' tongue was "hung in the middle and ran
at both ends." But Dot's comment was even more to the point. After Miss
Titus had started home after a particularly gossipy day at the old
Corner House, Dot said:

"Ruthie, don't you think Miss Titus seems to know an awful lot of _un-so
news_?"

However, to come to the important Friday of Carrie Poole's party: Ruth
and Agnes were finally dressed. They only _looked_ at their supper. Who
wanted to eat just before going to a real, country barn-dance? That is
what Carrie had promised her school friends.

Ruth and Agnes had their coats and furs on half an h