cost too very much. And I said I wanted a real
party."

"It will be just splendid!" declared Hanny.

"And we've been counting up. We have seven cousins to ask. And the girls
at school--some of them. I wish we knew some more boys. Oh, do you think
Jim would come?"

"I'll ask him if you would like."

"Oh, just coax him. I suppose Benny Frank will feel that he's too old.
But he's so nice. Oh, do you s'pose John Robert Charles' mother would
let him come? Oh, there! I promised to call him Charles, but I think
Robert's prettier, don't you? And mother said she'd write the
invitations on note-paper. And she has some lovely little envelopes."

That did look like a party.

"I think John Robert Charles is real nice," said Hanny timidly. "But I
am afraid of his mother."

"Oh, so is he, awful! Yet she isn't real ugly to him, only cross, and so
dreadful particular. She makes him go out and wipe his feet twice, and
wear that queer long cloak when it rains, and that red woollen tippet.
She bought red because it was healthy; he said so. He wanted
blue-and-gray. She lets him come over to our house sometimes, and he can
sing just splendid. But the boys do make fun of him."

Poor John Robert Charles often thought his life was a burden on account
of his name and his mother's great virtue of cleanliness. He was not
allowed to play with the boys. Ball and marbles and hopscotch were
tabooed. He could walk up and down and do errands, and that with going
to school was surely enough. Then she exaggerated him. His white collars
were always broader; if trousers were a little wide, his were regular
sailor's. She bought his Sunday suit to grow into, so by the second
winter it just fitted him. His every-day clothes she made. And oh, she
cut his hair!

It is very hard to be the daughter of such a mother, a rigid,
uncompromising woman with no sense of the fitness of things, of harmony
or beauty, or indulgence in little fancies that are so much to a child.
Quite as hard to be the son. Charles had everything needful to keep him
warm, in good health, and books for study. When it rained hard he had
six cents to ride in the omnibus. And he did have the cleanest house,
and the cleanest clothes, and, his mother thought, a very nice time.

Luckily there were no boys this end of the block. They were quite grown
up, or little children. But there were enough below to torment the poor
lad. In the summer when the charcoal man went by they would sing out: