“You come right ’long into dis yere house, Miss P’tricia!” Sarah rose commandingly.

“But what for?” Patricia questioned.

“What for?  If you wasn’t a white child, Miss P’tricia, I’d shore say you was onery.  I’s going be ’bliged to disport you to your pa, if you continues such disbehavior.”

Patricia scrambled to her feet, and came slowly over to the edge of the lawn.  Then, lifting her apron, she asked quietly:  “Is my frock torn, Sarah, or isn’t it?”

“You knows it is, Miss P’tricia!”

Patricia stretched out one slender leg.  “Is my stocking torn, or isn’t it?”

Sarah groaned.

Wheeling suddenly round, and still holding up her apron, Patricia demanded:  “Is my frock dirty, or isn’t it?”

“Miss P’tricia, you’s shore possessed to-day!”

“Aunt Julia said yesterday morning, that the very next time I got myself torn or dirty, needlessly, I must put a clean gingham apron on and go that way for the rest of the day.”

“But, honey—­you know Miss Julia never ’tended you to come to your own party in any such fixings!  A gingham apron at a party!  You come ’long upstairs with me, Miss P’tricia; I’ll resume all the ’sponsibility.”

“Aunt Julia said ‘the very next time’; this is the very next time.”

“She done lay out your dress ’fore she went, honey—­so crisp and nice and all the pretty pink ribbons,” Sarah spoke coaxingly.

“Aunt Julia didn’t know—­I hadn’t tumbled out of the apple tree then.”

“I’se going phonegraph your aunt right off!” Sarah declared.

Patricia caught her breath.  Then she remembered.  “But they haven’t any ’phone at Gar’s Hollow!”

Sarah wrung her hands.  “And all them little ladies in white dresses, and the hostess o’ the ’casion looking like ’straction!”

“I always feel like distraction when I’m all stiff and starchy and uncomfortable,” Patricia said; “I’d rather look it than feel it.”

“Oh, I ain’t overlooking that you’re powerful reconciled to going to your own party dressed like you is now, Miss P’tricia!  Anyhow, you’re going to have a good wash-up and your hair combed; Miss Julia ain’t laid down no commands against that.”

“W-well,” Patricia slowly conceded, “only I’ll see to it myself, Sarah.”

Patricia’s thick mop of brown curls was of the tangly order; and when things had gone wrong, Sarah’s touch was not always of the gentlest.

An hour later, Sarah, from her post of vantage on the side porch, saw six little girls coming up the path.  There were no boys invited.  Miss Kirby thought it so much nicer for little girls to play quietly by themselves.

A moment, Sarah stared at them in amazement; then her fat sides shook with laughter.  “I shore might’ve knowed it!  So that’s what she was so busy phonegraphing ’bout!  That chile shore weren’t born yesterday.  Gingham aprons, every last one o’ them!”