“My land!” she cried in amazement. “Where did you get them clothes, Elsie?”
Elsie laughed; the first normal, girlish laugh that Mary Louise and Jane had ever heard from her.
“Don’t I look nice, Hannah?” she asked. “I haven’t seen myself yet in a mirror, but I’m sure I do. I feel so different.”
“You look swell, all right,” agreed the servant. “But no credit to you! If that’s what you done with your aunt’s money——”
“Oh, no, Hannah!” protested Elsie. “You’re wrong there. I didn’t buy these things. They were given to me.”
The two girls were standing at the screen door now, in full view, and Elsie beckoned for them to come inside. “These are my friends, Hannah. The girls who rescued Aunt Mattie’s kitten—remember? And they brought me the clothes this morning.”
The woman shook her head.
“It might be true, but nobody’d believe it. Folks don’t give away nice things like that. I know that, for I’ve had a lot of ‘hand-me-downs’ in my life.... Besides, they fit you too good.”
“But we did bring them to Elsie,” asserted Jane. “You can see that we’re all about the same size. And we can prove it by our mothers. We’ll bring them over——”
“You’ll do nuthin’ of the kind!” returned Hannah. “Miss Mattie don’t want a lot of strangers pokin’ into her house and her affairs. Now, you two run along! And, Elsie, hurry up and get out of that finery. Look at them dishes waitin’ fer you in the sink!”