“Nothing. Say! What’s Mrs. Cole announcing?”
“We can go to town and stay for lunch!” Betsy reported coming up to them. “All we have to do is go in pairs and sign out and sign in just like the college girls. I was scared to death we’d have to make out lists of what we needed and I knew I’d never think of it all. When I see things I need I remember. Hurry, let’s get ready. By the time we get back maybe they will let us claim our things which were salvaged.”
“I can’t bear to think I lost my diary, my tennis racket, my boots, the cards off my Christmas packages, and the Hanfstaengel print just when I was beginning to love the cherubs and enjoy living with them.”
“Don’t speak of losses——” Sue choked up. Mimi knew she was worrying about her violin, a mellow toned old instrument which had been in the family five generations. There was something which could not be replaced. Her own losses seemed trivial in comparison.
“I want to go to town, too,” some one called as they signed up and turned to leave. “Write my name, please.”
If she had not spoken they would not have known what name to write. At first glance, Chloe looked like the little brother, Worry Wart, in the cartoon, “Born Thirty Years Too Soon.” Yet as she walked toward them, rapidly but not rushed, there was something regal in her step and proud carriage that funny-paper clothes did not hide.
Suppose she should turn out to be a princess!
The town was ready for the girls when they arrived. The aisles in the five-and-ten-cent stores were as jammed as they are at Christmas shopping season. The drug stores were overrun. Dresses in sizes 12-14-16 were selling like hot cakes. Two of the thriftier merchants displayed signs that the four o’clock express was bringing fresh shipments of ready-to-wear, ordered by telephone that morning.
“Good as circus day,” Mimi said as they joined hands to try to “crash” Woolworth’s.
“Let’s only buy ten cent sizes of everything,” Sue suggested. “They’ll be plenty to last three days.”