“Whyever not?” said her cousin calmly.
Lilac sat down again. “I dursn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t ever bear to look Mother in the face.”
“Has she ever told you not?”
“N–no,” answered Lilac hesitatingly; “leastways she only said once that the girls made frights of themselves with their fringes.”
“Frights indeed!” said Agnetta scornfully; “anyhow,” she added, “it ’ull grow again if she don’t like it.” So it would. That reflection made the deed seem a less daring one, and Lilac’s face at once showed signs of yielding, which Agnetta was not slow to observe. Warming with her subject, she proceeded to paint the improvement which would follow in glowing colours, and in this she was urged by two motives—one, an honest desire to smarten Lilac up a little, and the other, to vex and thwart her aunt, Mrs White; to pay her out, as she expressed it, for sundry uncomplimentary remarks on herself and Bella.
“And supposing,” was Lilac’s next remark, “as how I was to make up my mind, I couldn’t never do it for myself. I should be scared.”
This difficulty the energetic Agnetta was quite ready to meet. She would do it. Lilac had only to run down to the farm early next morning, and, after she was made fashionable, she could go straight on to the artist. “And won’t he just be surprised!” she added with a chuckle. “I don’t expect he’ll hardly know you.”
“You’re quite sure it’ll make me look better?” said Lilac wistfully. She had the utmost faith in her cousin, but the step seemed to her such a terribly large one.
“Ain’t I?” was Agnetta’s scornful reply. “Why, Gusta says all the ladies in London wears their hair like that now.”
After this last convincing proof, for Gusta’s was a name of great authority, Lilac resisted no longer, and soon discovered, by the striking of the church clock, that it was getting very late. She said good-bye to Agnetta, therefore, and, leaving her to make her way back at her leisure, ran quickly on through the meadows all streaked and sprinkled with the spring flowers. After these came the dusty high-road for a little while, and then she reached the foot of the steep hill which led up to her home. The artist gentleman was there as usual, a pipe in his mouth, and a palette on his thumb, painting busily: as she hurriedly dropped a curtsy in passing, Lilac’s heart beat quite fast.