"Oh, but it won't do at all!" cried Elise, breaking away from her to run into the next room. "See, mamma, they don't match." In her eagerness Elise leaned over, bending herself like a little acrobat, till the pink bow on her hair was on a level with the pink silk stockings.
"There's barely a shade difference," laughed Mrs. Walton. "The difference is so slight that nobody will notice it unless you expect to double up occasionally like a jack-knife and call attention to it."
"Of course I don't expect to do that," said Elise, with such a funny little air of injured dignity that her mother caught her up with a hasty kiss. "You're a dear little peacock, even if you do think too much of your fine feathers. But you can't stop to make a fuss about your ribbons now. It would be making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Run back to Milly for your hat. I hear the carriage stopping out in front."
"What a lot of things I'll have to write about in my next letter to the girls," thought Lloyd, as they rolled along in the carriage a few minutes later. "Joyce and Betty will like to hear about the general's home and all the interesting things in it, and Eugenia will enjoy this part of my visit most."
THE BUTTERFLY CARNIVAL.
It was with a view to impressing Eugenia with the elegance of her friends, that Lloyd noticed every detail of the beautiful luncheon. She intended that Eugenia should hear about it all. Gay butterflies, so lifelike that one could not believe that human hands had made them, were poised everywhere, on the flowers, the candle-shades, the curtains. The menu cards were decorated with them, the fine hand-painted china bore swarms of them around their dainty rims, and even the ices were moulded to represent them. The little hostess herself, fluttering around among her guests as gracefully as if she too were a winged creature, wore a gauzy dress of palest blue, embroidered in butterflies, and there were butterflies caught here and there in her golden curls.
The Little Colonel could scarcely eat for admiring her. She felt very elegant and grown up to be the guest at such an entertainment, and as she took her place at the table between Malcolm and Rob, she wished with all her heart that Eugenia could peep in and see her.
It was time to start to the Butterfly Carnival almost immediately when luncheon was over, and again Lloyd felt very elegant and grown up rolling along in the carriage to the matinee. Mrs. Moore ushered the party into the box she had taken for Anna and her little friends, and more than one person in the audience turned to ask his neighbour, "Who are those lovely children? Did you ever see such handsome boys? They have such charming manners. It is like a scene from some old court-play." The Little Colonel, sitting beside Anna, with the two little knights leaning forward to talk to her, to pick up her fan, or adjust her lorgnette, was all unconscious that any one in the audience was watching her admiringly, but she wished again that Eugenia could see her.