“Good,” laughed Maude. “Now there ought to be a blouse—who has the gayest one?”
“Isabelle has,” said Mabel. “That robin’s egg blue one.”
“Good,” said Maude. “Now I’ll go and gather in all those duds and dump them in here. And then Cora and I will call on Augusta. After we get her talked over, you can help dress her, Henrietta. The rest of you giggle too easily—you’d give the show away. But you can peek in one at a time through the transom if you’re very careful.”
“I can provide a gorgeous string of bright red beads,” offered Henrietta. “And I know where I can get a pair of earrings. She’ll be a perfect scream.”
Augusta was not at all a pretty girl. She had a large, rather stupid face (Henrietta said she looked like a sheep) a meager amount of very stiff and very straight taffy colored hair, her complexion was pale and pasty and her figure was bad; mostly because she was not careful to stand nicely. She proved as easily led as Maude had predicted. She accepted the girls’ offer of assistance with alacrity.
“You’d be lovely with curls,” persuaded Cora, wickedly. “I happen to have a curling iron and an alcohol lamp in my pocket right now. I was just carrying them around—well, just carrying them around, you know. Matches too. Well now, we’ll just light up the little lamp—like that—and we’ll try a little curl—like this. Sit still so I won’t burn your ears—they stick out a good deal so I have to be careful. Here’s Henrietta—she’ll tell us a lovely story while I curl. You’re going to be so beautiful that nobody will know which is you and which is the ice cream.”
“Here’s this adorable skirt,” said Maude, returning with a gay armful of garments. “But you ought to have a bath.”
“I had one last night,” said Augusta.
“Then I’ll dress your feet,” said Henrietta, grabbing the pink silk stockings and flopping down on the floor.
“But they’re pink,” objected Augusta,