She regarded her figure dismally in the cheval. Her chubby face had regained its undistinguished pink. She was sorry she could not remain pale, it was so much more distinguished to be pale.
"How long I take to grow up--in every way." She sighed in a reflective manner.
What she was thinking was how long she took to become like one of the Story Book Girls.
It is probable that she would never have run to long words, had it not been her dearest desire to grow up like one of the Story Book Girls. It was the desire of every sister in the Leighton family. Each worked on it differently however. Mabel, the eldest, now seventeen, in the present delights of hair going up and skirts letting down, took her ideas of fashion straight from "Adelaide Maud" the elegant one. "Adelaide Maud" wore her hair in coils and sat under heliotrope parasols. Mabel surreptitiously tried that effect as often as five times a day with the family absent.
Jean threw all her ambitions on the sporting carriage of "Madeline" who was a golfer.
Betty determined to wear bangles and play the violin because "Theodora," the youngest of the lot, did that. And Elma based her admiration of "Hermione" on the fact that she had "gone in" for science. Long ago they had christened their divinities. It did not do to recognize latterly that the Dudgeons were known in society by other names altogether. One can do these dreamy, inconsequent things with the most superb pleasure while one's family remains between certain romantic ages; in the case of the Leightons at the moment when Elma ran to her bedroom--between the ages of ten and seventeen. Betty was ten, Elma twelve, Jean fifteen and Mabel seventeen.
It was an axiom with the girls that their parents need not know how they emulated the Story Book Girls. Yet the information leaked out occasionally.
It was also considered bad form to breathe a word to the one elder brother of the establishment. Yet even there one got into trouble.
"Why on earth do you call her Adelaide Maud when her name is Helen?" asked Cuthbert one day bluntly. "Met her at a dance--and she nearly slew me. I called her Miss Adelaide!"
"O--o--o--oh!"