were talking to the old white rooster:  “I’d rather be dressed up and look nice than to play, and I needn’t romp at all.  If we were to begin trying charms after supper, Mrs. Grayson would be almost sure to let us stay until after Jennie’s party begins, and then all the big boys and girls would see my lovely clothes.  Nobody out here knows I’ve got ’em.  And then if I should go down cellar with a looking-glass and candle and somebody should look over my shoulder, I’d be so glad that the first time he ever saw me I was all in green and white like the Princess Emeralda, with my beautiful pale green party shoes on.”

Alas!  Aunt Sally was right.  The flotsam and jetsam of too many sentimental stories and fairy tales were afloat in the child’s active mind.  A few minutes later she had gathered the eggs and put them away in the pantry.  Then she stepped into the sitting-room, awed by the solemn stillness that enveloped the usually cheerful room.  How strange and dark it seemed with all the blinds closed!  She groped her way across the floor, and tiptoed through the hall as if she were afraid that the great eight-day clock in the corner might hear her and call her back.  Its loud tick-tock was the only sound in the house, except her own rapid breathing.

[Illustration:  “IT WAS THE BOX THAT HELD THE GREEN KID SHOES.”]

Throwing open a western window, she pushed back the shutters until the guest-chamber was all alight with the glow of the sunset.  Then she clutched the handles of the bureau drawer with fingers that twitched guiltily, and gave a jerk.  It was locked.  For a moment her disappointment was so great that she was ready to cry, but her face soon cleared and she began a search for the keys.  Under the rug, in the vases on the mantel, behind photograph frames, into every crack where a key could be hidden, she peered with eager brown eyes.  It was not to be found.  Finally she climbed on a chair to the highest closet shelf, where she came across something that made her give a cry of delight.  It was the box that held the green kid shoes.

“I’ll wear this much of my party clothes, anyhow,” she declared, scrambling down with the box in her arms.  Then followed a fruitless search for the silk stockings that matched them.  They were not in the box with the shoes, where they had always been kept, and a rummage through the drawers showed nothing suitable.

She heard her Aunt Sally’s cook blowing the horn for supper before she gave up the search.  That night after she and Lottie had gone up to bed, she took her cousin into her confidence.

“Mother hasn’t left a thing unlocked but my school clothes,” she said.  “I can’t find a stocking except my red ones and my striped ones and some horrid old brown things.  She hasn’t left out a single white pair for Sundays; I don’t see what she could have been thinking of.”  Nowadays little girls might not think that such a distressing matter, but twenty-five years ago no stockings but white ones were considered proper for full-dress occasions.