“Now I shall have a high old time! It seems to me that Aunt Priscilla won’t have the same ideas about clothes that I do; and the trick is to change her opinions.”
Without having formed any definite plans, but with a sublime determination to conquer in the fray, Ladybird came back and sat down demurely in a small chair facing her aunt.
“Your clothes, Lavinia,” Miss Priscilla began, “are shocking, and quite unfit for you to wear.”
“Do you think so?” said Ladybird, with the air of polite interest which her aunts had learned to regard as ominous. “Now I think they’re real pretty. They were made for me in Bombay. I picked out the stuffs myself.”
“I should think you did,” said Miss Priscilla; “and they’re hideous. Now that white dress with the huge round red spots is something awful, and you shall never wear it again.”
“Oh, I guess I will, aunty,” said Ladybird, cheerfully; “that’s my very favoritest dress of all, and I wouldn’t let you send that to the heathen for anything.”
“It’s far more suitable for a Fiji cannibal than for a Christian child. Your clothes are all too gaudy in coloring, Lavinia, and they must be discarded. I shall buy you some neat, quiet patterns in soft grays and browns, which will be much more suitable for a refined little gentlewoman.”
“Aunty,” cried Ladybird, springing up, her black elf-locks flying about her thin little face, and her long arms waving, while her whole body quivered with excitement, “do I look like a refined little gentlewoman?”
“You do not,” said Miss Priscilla Flint, staring critically at her niece; “but I shall do all in my power to make you look like one.”
Ladybird leaned her head on one hand and gazed thoughtfully at her aunt. After a few moments’ pause, she said reflectively: