  This was one of the invitations: Dear Bertol: I hope you will not think it odd if I ask you to be either a table-furnishing or something to eat at my Hungrily your friend, 45 Muscovy Street, About thirty children came. Of course there were more girls than boys (there always are); still, the boys could be discovered without a microscope. Some of the guests were these: 1. Mock Turtle (soup). A boy with green cloth slippers on hands and feet, and a green oval cardboard shield on front and back. He wore green trousers and stockings, green tissue-paper hair, and green goggles. 2. Black Bass. A boy in burnt cork dressed like a negro singer. On a card hung about his neck was drawn a bar of music showing “bass” notes. 3. Duck. A little girl in a white duck dress. 4. Turkey. A boy in a fez and Turkish clothes—orange sash, baggy red jacket and trousers, and pointed shoes. He wore an immense burnt-cork mustache. 5. Game. A girl carried a checker-board under one arm and a pachisi board under the other. 6. Hare. A girl with her “hair” worn long. 7. Pear. Two girls kept hold of hands all the evening. 8. Sole (the fish). A girl wearing a card on which was pasted the picture of a shoe-sole. 9. Whitebait. A boy dressed in white (not duck, however). He carried a short bamboo fish-pole. The hook end of the line was fastened about his neck. 10. Chinaware. A girl in Chinese clothes. As soon as a guest arrived he was given a numbered sheet and a pencil, and was told to guess—without exchanging hints with his neighbors—what everybody else was supposed to be. The reward for the longest list was an angel-cake, and for the shortest a stick of barber-pole candy, tied with bright green ribbon. Really, there were two dinner-parties that evening, for while the lists were being counted Mrs. Arned served lemonade and crackers. |
|
