Ally's eyes opened wide with astonishment at this conclusion. Florence!

Aunt Kate read the meaning of that astonished look, and sent a glance to Ally that said as plainly as _words_ could say, "You see, even Florence didn't mean as badly as you thought."

AN APRIL FOOL.

CHAPTER I.

"Have you written it, Nelly?"

"Yes, I have it here in my pocket. I'll show it to you when I get a chance."

"Oh, show it now! There's as good a chance now as you'll have, for the rest of the girls are all on the other side of the room. Come;" and Lizzy Ryder held out her hand coaxingly.

Nelly sent a quick glance around the school-room, and then took from her pocket a small square envelope. The envelope was directed to Miss Angela Jocelyn. Lizzy Ryder gave a little giggle as she read this name; but as she drew forth the note-sheet and read written upon it in a slender pointed handwriting, "Miss Marian Selwyn requests the pleasure of Miss Angela Jocelyn's company on the evening of April 1st," her giggle became a smothered shriek, and she said to her cousin,--

"Oh, Nelly, it's perfect; she'll never suspect. It looks just like Marian Selwyn's writing. Wouldn't it be too good if we could somehow get hold of Angela's acceptance and keep it back, and have her actually _go_ to the party. What _do_ you suppose Marian would say to her when she walked in?"

"She wouldn't _say_ anything, but she'd _look_ so astonished, and she'd be so stiff that Miss Angela would very soon find out she wasn't very welcome. But we can't keep back the note very well, even if we could get hold of it,--it might get us into trouble, for it would be against the law; but there's no law against an April Fool letter of our own, and 'twill be just as good fun in the end, for Marian Selwyn, of course, will set Miss Angela right in double quick time after she receives her note. Oh, I can just imagine the top-lofty style in which she will inform Miss Angela that there must be some mistake."

"And then, of course, they'll both find out that somebody's been April-fooling them."

"Of course. But that isn't going to interfere with our fun. Miss Angela will be set down by that time just where I want her, when she discovers that her invitation is nothing but an April fool on her. I wish--But, hush, somebody's coming this way;" and in an instant Nelly had whisked into her pocket the note she had written, and the cousins were walking down the room, talking in a loud tone about their lessons. The "somebody coming" was a very quiet but a very observing girl, who, as she saw the sudden start of Lizzy and Nelly, also caught sight of the little white missive as it was whisked into Nelly's pocket, and immediately thought,--

"There's some mischief going on. I wonder what it is."

"That sly Mary Marcy, she's always spying 'round," whispered Nelly to her companion, as they pa.s.sed along. Then in a high voice, thinking to mislead Mary, she cried, "Oh, Lizzy, now I've shown you _my_ composition you must show me yours."

Mary Marcy was a shrewd girl as well as an observant one, and she laughed in her sleeve as she heard this.

"Composition! that was no school composition", she said to herself; and when a few minutes later the bell rang for the close of recess, and she saw Nelly send a significant glance to Lizzy as the two hurried to their seats, this shrewd, observant Mary was surer than ever that there was mischief going on, and when she went home that afternoon she told her mother what she had seen and heard, and how she felt about it,--for Mary was very confidential with her mother, and told her most of her school secrets. Mrs. Marcy listened to this telling with that placid Quaker way of hers, and remarked in her quaint Quaker phrase, "Thee mustn't be too suspicious, my dear; it maybe harmless mischief, after all." And then Mary had replied, "I shouldn't be suspicious of any of the other girls, mother; but Lizzy and Nelly Ryder are always doing and saying the mischievous things that have a sting in them;" and Mrs. Marcy, spite of her Quaker charity, then admitted that she had never quite liked the ways of those girls, and had often been sorry that they were in the Westboro' High School; "but, poor things," she added the moment she had made this admission, "they are more to be pitied than the persons they hurt, for _they_ can get over the hurt, but these poor girls can't get over their own wrong-doing so easily. It makes a black mark on them every time, and black marks are hard to rub off; and thee'll see if they are up to any wrong-doing now, it will leave a mark, and so they'll get the worst of it in the long run."

"But it's always _such_ a long run before a mark of that kind shows,"

laughed Mary. "Girls of that sort seem to succeed in making everybody but themselves uncomfortable, and these two specially always appear to be so gay and full of good times with their giggle and chatter."

"But the Bible says, Mary, 'for as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool;' and thee can think of this the next time thee hears the chatter, and then thee can say to thyself, 'It _may_ be nothing but foolish folly, after all.'"

"Yes, it _may_ be nothing but that," Mary allowed; but when the next morning she heard it again, her first doubts and suspicions returned in full force, and she said to herself, "I'm perfectly sure that there's something more than mere foolishness in this crackling of thorns. I'm perfectly sure there's mischief with a sting in it. I feel it in the air, and I'm just going to watch out and see if I can't stop it as I did that horrid St. Valentine business last winter."

And while good kind Mary was thus "watching out" for this mischief, there, only two or three seats away from her, sat Angela Jocelyn, about whom all the mischief was gathering as a dark cloud gathers over a fair sky. And Angela's sky was particularly fair to her just then, for she had been made very happy by the invitation she had received that morning,--so happy that she had said to her elder sister, Martha Jocelyn, "To think of Marian Selwyn's inviting _me_. Isn't it beautiful of her?" and Martha had answered back rather tartly, "I don't see why you should put such an emphasis on 'me,' as if you were so inferior.

You're as good as Marian Selwyn."

"Yes, Martha, I know--it isn't that I feel inferior in--in myself,"

Angela exclaimed; "but the Selwyns have always had money and everything--always, and we are poor and have lived so out of the way that I say it's beautiful and kind of Marian, when she knows me so little. Why, Martha, I never see her anywhere but on the street and at Sunday-school."

"Well, she likes you, I suppose. She's taken a fancy to you, and she's independent enough, I should hope, to invite any girl she likes, if the girl _is_ poor and lives out of the way," was Martha's cool reply.

Liked her! Taken a fancy to her! How Angela's heart jumped at this suggestion! Could it be possible that this lovely fortunate Marian Selwyn, that she had always admired from afar off, had taken a fancy to _her_,--poor, plain little Angela Jocelyn,--was her thought. And it was with this thought quickening her pulses that she wrote a cordial acceptance to the note of invitation; and it was this thought that sent such a bright look into her face that morning, that Mary Marcy said to her friend and seat-mate, Anna Richards, "Look at Angela Jocelyn, she is really growing pretty;" and a little later at the recess that followed directly after a recitation where Angela had easily led, as usual, Mary, catching sight of the frowning faces of Lizzy and Nelly Ryder, exclaimed: "Anna, if Angela Jocelyn is going to add good looks to her braininess, those Ryder girls will be more jealous of her than ever."

"And they pretend to look down on Angela because she is poor and her mother and sister take in sewing," responded Anna.

"All the same they don't look down on what Angela really _is_. She is superior to them in brains, and they know it, and that makes them want to pull her down," answered Mary.

"Yes, I heard Nelly Ryder say last week that Angela was altogether too conceited, and ought to be 'taken down'; and it would be just like Nelly Ryder to try to do it sometime."

"_Sometime_! I believe she is trying to do it now. I believe that that is the mischief she and her cousin Lizzy are planning this moment,"

cried Mary.

"What _do_ you mean?"

"I'll tell you;" and Mary related, as she had related to her mother, what she had seen and heard.

"Nelly Ryder has never forgiven Angela for getting the history prize; Nelly thought herself sure of it,--she as good as told me so," was Anna's only remark upon this.

"And now she's going to play some trick on Angela to take her down, as she calls it; that's what you think, isn't it? And that's what _I_ think. Oh, Anna, I wish I could ferret out the mischief and stop it. It will be something hateful and mortifying to poor Angela, I know. If I could only get some clew to what it is, so as to warn her."

"Yes; but as we are not sure that there _is_ any mischief, after all, you mustn't say anything to anybody yet."

"No, of course not; but I'll keep a sharp lookout, and I _may_ hear or see something that will give me a hint. What fun it would be to outwit one of the Ryder schemes!"

"Mary! with all your Quaker bringing-up, I do believe you are just pining for what our Jack would call 'a scrimmage.'"

"Well, I am, if that means getting the better of mischief-makers," Mary confessed with a laugh.

"But you won't succeed, if the mischief-makers are Nelly and Lizzy Ryder, Those, girls seem to get the best of everything and everybody.

Think now, for one thing, of their being acquaintances of Marian Selwyn's, and invited to her birthday party!"

"Oh, well, that is family acquaintance, Anna. The Ryders have always known the Selwyns, just as we have. The Selwyns and Ryders and Marcys have lived in Westboro', and visited each other for ages."

"I wish _I_ had, and then I might have been invited to this wonderful birthday party," exclaimed Anna, with a certain earnestness of tone that belied her gay little laugh, and made Mary say regretfully,--

"I wish I'd known you felt like this last week, I would have had you and Marian 'round to tea, and then you would have got acquainted, and she'd have been sure to have invited you; but it's too late now, for the party comes off Thursday, you know."

"Thursday! Why, Thursday is the first of April.. How funny that one's birthday should come on the first of April!"

"Funny--why?"

"Why? Because it's April-fool's day."

"Oh, I see; but I'm so used to Marian's birthdays, I don't always stop to think of that."

"But don't some people think of it? Don't they sometimes play--Oh, oh, Mary, Mary, mayn't this be your clew? Don't you believe that Nelly Ryder has been planning an April-fool trick upon Angela in connection with this party?"