"Billy!" remonstrated the newcomer laughingly. "You have a hug like a bear! You've spoiled my hair and crushed my attire. And I am in one of my best dresses, too, I'll give you to understand! I've brought six of the girls along with me, and we've pledged ourselves to put a dollar each in the box, and help make the thing go."
"Oh, but it's good to see you again," breathed Miss Billy. "My cup runneth over! I have a thousand things to say to you. Where shall I commence first?"
"Defer it till to-morrow," counselled Margaret. "We shall visit all day. Your time to-night belongs to the lawn fête, not to me,—and I am here to help you. Introduce me instantly to your Marie Jean Hennesy, and to your lady of letters with the six children, and I want to see every flower in the child garden, and Theodore,—oh, but first of all, let me meet your remarkable Francis Lindsay. Billy, your letters have taken on a suspicious tone of late!"
They locked arms in schoolgirl fashion, and came upon Marie Jean, who was presiding over a lemonade table. Miss Billy introduced them, and the two types of girlhood, one representing fashion in Cherry Street, the other the gentle blood of Ashurst Place, gazed intently at each other.
Marie Jean was gotten up in a style known as "regardless." She wore a sweeping black lace dress covered with spangles, that might have graced a coronation ceremony. The sleeves terminated at the elbows in two large puffs of blue satin, and her wrists tinkled with bracelets and bangles. Her hair was bushed in heavy frizzes over her ears, and in the untidy waves piled high on the top of her head gleamed a crescent of Rhine stones.
Marie Jean was gotten up in a style known as “regardless.”
"My, she's plain!" was Marie Jean's mental ejaculation as she looked at the girl before her. Margaret's pretty dark hair was parted evenly in the middle, and plaited into heavy Dutch braids about her shapely head. Her dress was a yellow embroidered mull, with simple sash ribbons of the same colour. Had it not been for two slender rings that flashed upon the finger of one hand, Marie Jean might not have thought her worthy of passing consideration. But as the girls talked on in a friendly fashion, she gleaned from Miss Billy's remarks that Margaret was a student of music and the modern languages:—that she pursued her studies in Europe:—that she would return in the Spring:—and Marie Jean could no longer doubt that she was the "real thing." Moreover, she was pretty,—undeniably pretty,—with dark eyes, and white even teeth. Marie Jean wondered if "he" might not fancy this stranger, and for the first time in her life, she considered her own personal attractions with misgivings.
A rush of lemonade trade separated the girls, and Miss Billy and Margaret, wending their way on, came upon Francis, lifting over the back fence a load of belated chairs, borrowed from the church.
"I'll call Moses Levi to do this,—you've worked enough to-day," ordered Miss Billy. "Beside, I want to introduce you to my very dearest friend, Margaret Van Courtland."