ittle kid," he said, as he had said once before, then he put the
rose carefully into his pocket.

CHAPTER XVII

NANCY PLANS A PARTY

"What are you doing, Nonie?"

Pencil poised in mid-air; Nancy leaned down from her Nest where she had
been working. Aunt Milly was nodding in her chair, her finger and
thumb between the pages of "Sarah Crewe," from which she had been
reading until she had succumbed to the drowsy sounds of the summer air.
Nonie had been tiptoeing back and forth across the grass making funny,
little, inarticulate sounds in her throat.

"I'm playing party," Nonie stopped under the apple tree and lifted a
thoughtful face to Nancy. "When I grow up I shall have ten children
and have parties all the time. There'll be harps and violins and drums
and lots and lots to eat. And I shall wear velvet, with a long train,
and carry a big fan." She sighed. "Do you always have to be beautiful
to do beautiful things?"

"Just doing beautiful things makes you seem beautiful," explained Nancy.

Nonie was not satisfied. "B'lindy makes beautiful cakes and pies but
_she_ isn't beautiful. And Jonathan puts seeds in the ground that grow
into pretty flowers but--he's ugly! Could I do beautiful things
and--look like this?" She spread out her shabby skirts.

Behind the troubled gaze Nancy caught the gleam of a vision.

"You can--you can! Nonie, no one can ever take your dreams away from
you!"

"Not even Liz," echoed Nonie, bitterly.

A few days before a tragedy had touched Nonie's life. From out of
nowhere there had wandered into her affections a hungry-eyed, maltese
cat with two small babies. Nonie had mothered them passionately,
tenderly. She had hidden scraps of food from her own meagre portions
to feed them; she had fitted a box with old rags and had concealed it
beneath the loose plankings of the shed. Then, mother cat, satisfied
that her babies were in good hands, had disappeared.

"Even kittens can't have mothers," Nonie had thought, perplexed over
the ways of the world. "Never mind, darlings, Nonie will love you,"
and she had kissed each small puss as a pledge of her devotion.

But a week later she found both kittens lying stiff and cold behind the
shed. At her passionate outburst, Liz had told her that "_she_ wa'nt a
goin' to have any _cats_ under foot!"

Nonie had taken her sorrow to the Bird's-Nest and Nancy and Aunt Milly
had managed to soothe her. But she would not forgive Liz.

"