“I don't know, Nettie. Why?”
“She's just sneaked 'em off to her room. When she saw me coming up the stairs, she scampered as if Satan was after her. What DO you suppose she wants of them?”
“I can't imagine,” repeated Mrs. Merriam. “Maybe she hardly knows herself—girls that age are like a boiling tea-kettle; you know; their imagination keeps bubbling up and spilling over, and then disappears into vapour. I sometimes think we bother Missy too much with questions—she doesn't know the answers herself.”
Mrs. Merriam was probably feeling the compunctions mothers often feel after they have scolded.
Aunt Nettie sniffed a little, but Missy wasn't questioned. And now the scene of our story may shift to a sunny morning, a few days later, and to the comparative seclusion of the sanitarium barn. There has been, for an hour or more, a suppressed sound of giggles, and Gypsy, sensing excitement in the air, stands with pricked-up ears and bright, inquisitive eyes. Luckily there has been no intruder—just the three of them, Gypsy and Missy and Tess.
“You're wonderful—simply wonderful! It's simply too swagger for words!” It was Tess speaking.
Missy gazed down at herself. It WAS swagger, she assured herself. It must be swagger—Tess said so. Almost as swagger, Tess asseverated, as the riding outfit worn by Miss Valerie Jones who was the swaggerest member of Macon City's swaggerest young set. Yet, despite her assurance of swaggerness, she was conscious of a certain uneasiness. She knew she shouldn't feel embarrassed; she should feel only swagger. But she couldn't help a sense of awkwardness, almost of distaste; her legs felt—and LOOKED—so queer! So conspicuous! The upper halves of them were clothed in two separate envelopments of pepper-and-salt material, gathered very full and puffy over the hips but drawn in tightly toward the knee in a particularly swagger fashion. Below the knee the swagger tight effect was sustained by a pair of long buttoned “leggings.”
“You're sure these leggings look all right?” she demanded anxiously.
“Of course they look all right! They look fine!”
“I wish we had some boots,” with a smothered sigh.