your mother wouldn't like it."

[Illustration: "SAT PERCHED AMONG ITS GUARDED BRANCHES"]

"Oh, bother!" exclaimed Ann under her breath, shutting the book with an
impatient slap; but she obediently swung herself down from the limb,
and went into the house for the key. The little cottage where Ann Fowler
lived stood just across the lane from her Uncle John's big brown house,
where she was staying while her mother was away from home. Mrs. Fowler,
who had been called to the city by her sister's illness, had taken
little Betty with her, but Ann could not afford to miss school and had
been left in her Aunt Sally's care. The arrangement was very agreeable
to the child, for it meant no dish-wiping, no dusting, no running of
errands while she was a guest. Her only task was to go across the lane
twice a day and feed the chickens.

As Ann came out of the house swinging the key, her aunt called her
again: "Mrs. Grayson was here to-day. She came to invite you and Lottie
to a Saturday afternoon romp with her little girls to-morrow. She's
asked a dozen boys and girls to come and play all afternoon and stay to
tea. Her oldest daughter, Jennie, is going to give a Hallowe'en party at
night, but she'll send you home in the carryall after tea, before the
foolishness begins."

"Didn't she invite us to the party too?" asked Ann, who had heard it
discussed at school all week by the older girls and boys of the
neighbourhood, until her head was full of the charms and mysteries of
Hallowe'en.

"Why, of course not," was the answer. "Jennie Grayson is fully eighteen