Stella sent out a dozen invitations to a party for Laurel in June. All Laurel’s schoolmates were having parties this year. Stella intended that Laurel’s party should surpass them all. There was going to be a tailless donkey, and a peanut-hunt, and a cobweb contest, and a Jack Horner pie, and creamed chicken, and ice-cream, and paper caps.

Laurel had been told all about the elaborate plans. She had helped select the invitation-cards with the pretty colored pictures in the corner, and the thrilling announcement underneath, “I am going to have a party.” She had stood close beside her mother when the blank spaces had been filled in. She had watched the addressing of each one of the little pink envelopes. Afterward, standing on tiptoes, she had dropped them, one by one, into the green box at the corner.

Laurel mailed the invitations on a Friday night. All day Saturday and Sunday she was full of the exhilarating consciousness that others were sharing the wonderful secret now. When she started to school on Monday there was a sparkle beneath the calm gray surface of her eyes that made them look almost black—like the pools of meadow-brooks in mid-morning sunshine. When Laurel came home at noon her eyes seemed to have faded like the pools when the sun is hidden behind clouds. Instead of the blackness and the sparkle there was a grave, wondering, bewildered look in them.

“Nobody can come to my party, Mother,” she announced briefly.

All day Sunday the mothers of the recipients of the pink envelopes had been busy at the telephone.

Twice Laurel had to tell her mother that nobody could come to the party before Stella grasped the significance of the announcement. Then fiercely she threw her arms about Laurel, and held her to her tight.

“We don’t care. We don’t care!” she burst out. “Let them stay away! We’ll have our party by ourselves! Don’t you mind, Lollie. We’ll have the party just the same—you and I and Uncle Ed Munn. Cats! Just because father runs off and leaves us all alone! Well—we’ve got each other, Lollie, anyhow. I won’t ever run off and leave you, and, oh, Lollie, you won’t ever run off and leave me, will you—ever, ever?” Stella was crying now.

Laurel did not cry. She stood very still, and listened, and afterward remembered.

Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

1

IT WAS SEVERAL weeks before Stella knew how serious her bullet wound was. She was calm by that time. She could talk over its details with Effie McDavitt with perfect composure and with a touch of brusque humor, too.