The four Corners abroad

by Amy Ella Blanchard

It was finally decided that Jo should go in Spanish dress, the girls suddenly remembering what they had brought from Spain with them, which supplemented would do very well to represent an aldeana costume. Juliet eventually went as a peacock, a spreading tail of feathers adorning the back of a greenish gold frock, and upon her head a clever arrangement of feathers and beak to represent the bird's head. Her bodice was of peacock blue and the whole effect was quite dazzling, and strange to say very becoming. Of the four girls it must be said that Mary Lee looked the best, her fair skin, blue eyes and neat features being exactly as they should be for a Dresden shepherdess. A fluffy white wig and a coquettish hat made the finishing touches to her dress, and she was very much pleased with herself as well she might be. Nan, though not so striking, was a quaint figure. Her bonnet was a great success, trimmed outside with long white plumes and some old-fashioned apple-green ribbons, and inside with bunches of pink roses which lay against the clusters of curls in which she had arranged her dark hair. The dress was a green silk with little bunches of pink flowers upon it, and her pink scarf drooping negligently was of the color of the roses in her bonnet. The whole party set off in an automobile and had that kind of good time which youth and high spirits can generally give us on such occasions. That they did not lack in partners for either games or dances goes without saying, and that it was an event long after referred to can be taken for granted.

After this there were not any great merry-makings, the gatherings in Mrs. Hoyt's sitting-room being quite sufficient for ordinary fun, and all worked hard between times. January did not bring anything but dark and sunless weather, so Mrs. Corner felt that she must pitch her tent elsewhere as she was feeling the effects of the lack of sunshine. She therefore decided to go to the Riviera for a couple of months.

"I shall not be so very far away," she said to Nan, who always felt the separation more than any of the others. "It is scarcely more than a day's journey, and if I am needed I can fly to you in less time than it would take to go to Boston from Virginia."

"Will Aunt Helen go with you?" asked Nan.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Corner. "Things didn't go altogether happily with you last winter, Nan, dear, and I hate to leave you in a foreign city with the responsibility of your younger sisters upon you. Mrs. Hoyt has very kindly offered to chaperon you and the Fräulein is quite to be relied upon, but still I do not like to go off and leave you to be the acting head of the family."

"It is quite different from last year," Nan told her, "for this is not a boarding-school, and you will not be the other side of the ocean as you were then. For my part, motherdel—that is a newly coined south German diminutive. I am your mädel; you are my motherdel instead of mutterchin—as I was saying, for my part, I would much rather Aunt Helen should be with you. We shall be perfectly comfortable, and I can't bear the idea of your going off alone. If you should be ill——"

"There are always good doctors and nurses to be had," her mother hastened to say.

"But not to have any of one's very own. No, mutterdel, Aunt Helen must go, too, and we will behave like the best of Cornelia's jewels."

"I am not afraid of you older girls, except in your case when you sacrifice yourself for Jack."

"Oh, but Jack is much more sensible. She is developing a better sense of proportion, and of right and wrong. She is terribly impetuous, but she does mean all right at heart."