r, she, as usual, made a cautious answer.
She was not going to be drawn into anything until she knew more. "Well,
I dunno as I wants to do more than I'm doing--letting 'ee eat my cake so
fast as I bakes it."

"But, Fanny, listen!" Kitty was so eager she scarcely knew how to
explain. "You know that Aunt Pike and Anna are going out this evening?"

"Yes, miss," with a sigh of relief; "from four to ten."

"Well," springing off the table in her excitement, "let us have a party
too; a jolly little one at home here by ourselves. Shall we?"

Betty slipped down from her perch on the clothes-press, Tony got off the
fender, and all clustered round Kitty in a state of eager excitement to
hear the rest of her plan. They felt certain there was more.
Fanny could not conceal her interest either.

"And what will be best of all," went on Kitty, "will be for you to ask us
to tea in the kitchen, and we will ask Jabez too, and Grace, of course"
--Grace was Emily's successor--"and we will have a really lovely time,
just as we used to have sometimes. Shall we? O Fanny, do say yes!"

"Seems to me," said Fanny, "there isn't no need. 'Tis all settled, to
my thinking." But there was a twinkle in her eye, and a flush of
excitement on her cheek, and any one who knew Fanny could see that she
was almost as pleased as the children.

"You are a Briton!" cried Dan, clapping her on the back resoundingly.

"I ain't no such thing," said Fanny, who usually thought it safest to
contradict everything they said to her. "I'm a Demshur girl, born and
bred, and my father and mother was the same before me. I ain't none of
your Britons nor Cornish pasties neither, nor nothing like 'em."

"No, you are a thoroughbred Devonshire dumpling, we know," said Dan
soothingly, "and not so bad considering, and you can make a pasty like a
native, though you aren't one, and never will be. It is a pity too, for
Jabez only likes--"

"I don't care nothing about Jabez, nor what he likes, nor what he
doesn't," cried Fanny, bending down over her oven to hide a conscious
blush which would spread over her round cheeks. "There's good and bad
of every sort, and I don't despise none. I only pities 'em if they
ain't Demshur."

"That is awfully good of you," said Dan solemnly. "We can cheer up
again after that. Fanny," more eagerly, "do tell us what you are going
to give us to eat."

But Fanny could not be coaxed into that. "I haven't said yet as I'm
going to giv