Elizabeth looked down at her “long basque” in dismay; she had striven hard over that waist and had thought that it would do very well, though conscious that it had faults. Her face flushed as she answered reluctantly:
“The seam in the back isn’t quite straight, but—I never made one like it before—and I thought it would do.”
“So it would, dear, but it can do better and we’ve got plenty of time to fix it. You’ll feel ever so much better about it when you see how the other girls are dressed.”
As Aunt Susan snipped and ripped and rebasted the refractory seam, Elizabeth brought out her little stores of finery to discuss their artistic features.
“Look,” she said, opening a pasteboard box which held her few ribbons. “I coaxed a long time for that, but I got it.” She held up for Aunt Susan’s approval a new Alsatian bow of pink ribbon. “I wanted the wide, but they didn’t have it, so I got a lot of the narrow and hid the joinings in the pleats. I think it’s pretty, don’t you?”
Susan Hornby looked at the bow critically, and then seeing Elizabeth’s face cloud over with a suspicion that she did not regard the treasure with favour, said slowly:
“It’s pretty—that is, it’s a pretty colour; but I was looking to see about how many yards there was in it, for the girls aren’t wearing Alsatian bows, as you call them, this year. They seem to be wearing their hair mostly in two plain braids. I’m glad of it, for you look ever so much better with your hair done that way. We can rip it up and press the ribbon. I’m awfully glad you’ve got such a lot; It’ll make lovely bows for the braids.”
While Elizabeth ripped her bow to pieces Aunt Susan’s tongue ran on with the subject nearest her heart.
“To-morrow morning I’m going to have you sit by that window and watch the girls that go past about school time. You’ll learn more this month doing that than you would in school, I expect. It’s just as well you can’t start till next term, since you didn’t get here at first.”
“Next term!” her new dresses with their long basques—long basques were more talked of than any other feature of dress that year, not by Elizabeth alone but all womankind—had seemed so magnificent that she could not think of it being necessary to take a whole month to make them over.