frightened her.

"I doubt if she would enjoy it. She would be the youngest one
there--most of them will be from fourteen to twenty. The neighbors live
so far apart, they have to combine different ages in order to find
guests enough for a party."

At first, Chicken Little would not hear to Gertie's remaining behind,
but finding that she would really be happier at home, stopped urging
her. Jane and Katy were soon joyfully planning what they should wear.
They were to go in their party frocks, each taking another dress along
for the morning and the picnic. Jane was to wear Alice's gift. Katy had
a dainty ruffled muslin with cherry-colored sash and hair ribbons.

"I was afraid I wasn't going to have a single chance to wear it here,"
she remarked naively.

The boys were busy shining their shoes, and performing certain mysteries
of shaving with very little perceptible change in their appearance.
Ernest felt that he could not possibly go without a new necktie, but as
no one was going to town before the event, he had to content himself
with borrowing one from Frank.

It took the combined efforts of Marian and Gertie and Mrs. Morton to get
the revellers dressed to their satisfaction. Gertie waited on the two
girls as patiently as any maid. Marian was in great demand by the boys
to coax in refractory cuff buttons and give a "tony" twist to the ties.

"Is tony the very latest, Ernest?"

"That's what Sherm says. Just make the bow a little more perky, can't
you, Marian? I don't want to look like a country Jake."

"Ernest, you are just the boy to go to Annapolis; you are so fussy about
your clothes."

"Golly, I hope I do get to go. Father hasn't heard from the Senator yet,
but he may be away from home."

Sherm was struggling with his tie, getting red and hot in the process.
He had just tied it nearly to his satisfaction, when he carelessly gave
it a jerk and had it all to do over again.

"Caesar's Ghost!" he exclaimed vengefully, "what do they make these
things so pesky slippery for?"

Marian laughed and Sherm colored in embarrassment over his outburst.

"Please excuse me, but this is the fifth time I've tied the critter."

"Let me try." Marian turned him to the light and had the bow nicely
exact in no time.

The girls found their source of woe in their hair. Katy, having learned
that most of the young people would be older than themselves, decided to
put her hair up, and look grown up, too. Mrs. Morton was horrifie