“The shoes and slippers in the pictures,” mused Randy, “have beautiful bows on the toes, and they have tiny little heels. I wonder how they ever managed to walk on them.” So still she stood, looking down at her shoes, the broom held listlessly in her hand, that her mother turned to see where she had gone.
“Why, Randy Weston, what ails you? You’ve been mooning ’round all this morning. You do try to help me real good, and then, first thing I know, you’re miles away thinkin’ of something or other. I say, whatever ails you?”
“Nothing,” said Randy, “I was only wondering about the fairy tales in the book.”
“Well, more’n ever I think it can’t be a good kind o’ book to read, that makes a good, sensible girl so took up with it that she can’t think of anything else.”
“But if father says it’s all right, I can read it, can’t I?” said Randy.
“I suppose so,” said the tired woman. “Now go and find Prue. Like enough she’s into something by this time.”
Little Prue had a positive talent for inventing mischief, and as Randy hastened to the door to call her, she remembered that the little sister had had at least an hour in which to play without supervision. “I do hope,” said Randy, “that she hasn’t torn her dress or lost her sunbonnet while I’ve been helping mother with the cooking. I’ll call first, and if she don’t answer, then I’ll hunt for her.” So, standing in the doorway, she called long and loudly.
Such a pretty picture Randy made, all the sweeter because she never dreamed that she possessed the beauty of which she read in the fairy book, and for which she so ardently longed.
The kitchen doorway was low, and up on one side grew scarlet runners, which over the top clasped tendrils with the morning glories as they clambered up the other side of the door-frame and half covered the kitchen window.
The cool wind from across the meadow fanned Randy’s flushed cheeks, and tossed back some short brown ringlets from her forehead, for Randy’s hair would curl, as she said, “spite of anything.” She did her best with brush and comb to make it lie smoothly, but the short ends flew back every time, and curled and rippled in a manner which would have been the envy of many a city girl who was a slave to “curlers.” Her hair was a soft, light brown, and her eyes were large and gray, bright and twinkling. She was quite tall for a girl of her age, just fifteen that summer, and she stood as “straight as a birch,” her father said.