All Morningside was in a perfect flutter of anticipation and excitement.  There had never been a lawn party in the little village before, and Effie Dean, twelve years old to-day, was to have a lawn party, to which every child for miles, to say nothing of a gay troop of cousins and friends from the city, had been invited.  Everybody was going, of course.

The Deans had taken for the season a beautiful old homestead, the owners of which were in Europe.  They were having gala times there, and they managed to draw all the young folks of the village in to share them.  All, indeed, except one little girl.  Cynthia Mason did not expect to go to many festivities, but with her whole heart she longed to see what a lawn party might be.  The very name sounded beautiful to her, and she said it over and over wistfully as she went slowly down the door-yard between the tigerlilies and the hollyhocks, through the rough gate which hung so clumsily on its leathern hinges, and, with her basket by her side, began her daily task of picking beans.

Cynthia Mason had no mother.  Her father loved his little daughter and was kind to her, but he was a silent man, who was not very successful, and who had lost hope when his wife had died.  People said he had never been the same man since then.  His sister, Cynthia’s Aunt Kate, was an active, stirring woman, who liked to be busy herself and to hurry other people.  She kept the house as clean as a new pin, had the meals ready to the moment, and saw that everybody’s clothing was washed and mended; but she never felt as if she had time for the kissing and petting which is to some of us as needful as our daily food.

In her way she was fond of Cynthia, and would have taken good care of the child if she had been ill or crippled.  But as her niece was perfectly well, and not in want of salts or senna, Aunt Kate was often rather tried with her fondness for dreaming in the daytime, or dropping down to read a bit from the newspaper in the midst of the sweeping and dusting.

There were, in truth, a good many worries in the little weather-beaten house, and Miss Mason had her own trouble in making both ends meet.  She was taking summer boarders now to help along, and when Cynthia had asked her if she might go to Effie’s party, the busy woman had been planning how to crowd another family from New York into the already well-filled abode, so she had curtly replied: 

“Go to a lawn party!  What nonsense!  Why, no child.  You cannot be spared.”  And she had thought no more about it.

“Step around quickly this morning, Cynthy,” she called from the buttery window.  “Beans take for ever and ever to cook, you know.  I can’t imagine what’s got into the child,” she said to herself.  “She walks as if her feet were shod with lead.”

The blue gingham sunbonnet kept on bobbing up and down among the bean poles, when suddenly there was a rush and a rustle, two arms were thrown around Cynthia’s waist, and a merry voice said: