Miss Lavendar looked at her tea-table again, and blushed.
“I know you’ll think me dreadfully foolish,” she said. “I am foolish . . . and I’m ashamed of it when I’m found out, but never unless I am found out. I’m not expecting anybody . . . I was just pretending I was. You see, I was so lonely. I love company . . . that is, the right kind of company . . . but so few people ever come here because it is so far out of the way. Charlotta the Fourth was lonely too. So I just pretended I was going to have a tea-party. I cooked for it . . . and decorated the table for it . . . and set it with my mother’s wedding china . . . and I dressed up for it.”
Diana secretly thought Miss Lavendar quite as peculiar as report had pictured her. The idea of a woman of forty-five playing at having a tea-party, just as if she were a little girl! But Anne of the shining eyes exclaimed joyfuly,
“Oh, do you imagine things too?”
That “too” revealed a kindred spirit to Miss Lavendar.
“Yes, I do,” she confessed, boldly. “Of course it’s silly in anybody as old as I am. But what is the use of being an independent old maid if you can’t be silly when you want to, and when it doesn’t hurt anybody? A person must have some compensations. I don’t believe I could live at times if I didn’t pretend things. I’m not often caught at it though, and Charlotta the Fourth never tells. But I’m glad to be
