Primrose thought she would ask Aunt Wetherill. One morning she was up in the sewing room and Patty was downstairs pressing out a gown that was to be made over.
"You look nice and rosy, little Primrose," said the lady. "A run out of doors is a good thing for you. I saw a flock of children sliding yesterday, and I thought I knew the scarlet hood. It is more sensible than a hat. Did you like the fun?"
"Oh, so much!" answered Primrose, her soft eyes shining like a summer sky. "And I can keep up a good long while. But, when I go down, I do often tip over."
"Thou wilt learn all these things. I am glad to have thee with the children, too. It is not good for little ones to live too much with grown people and get their ways."
"I know some of the girls," said Primrose. "I like Hannah Lee very much. She goes to Master Dove's school, but Bella said she was poor."
"Fie! fie! Children should put on no such airs! Bella hath altogether too many of them, and her mother is not an overwise woman! Let me hear no more about whether one is poor or rich."
Primrose was not at all hurt by the chiding tone. She was so glad that she might keep her friend with a clean conscience that she looked up and smiled.
"Thou art a wholesome little thing, and the training of the Friends has some good points. Let me see—I think thou canst have a white beaver this winter, and a cloak with swansdown. And I will give Bella one of blue, so she shall not ape thee. I do not like one to copy the other when one purse is long and the other short."
"Oh, a white beaver! That would be beautiful!" and the eager eyes were alight more with pleasure than vanity.
"She is like her mother," Madam Wetherill thought. Primrose was really happy not to give up Hannah Lee. They could find so many subjects of interchange—what the children were doing at Master Dove's school, and the plays they had. The snowballing, although as yet there had been only one snow, had been almost a battle between two parties of boys.