The girls had now fairly entered upon a period of life in which boys cease to be “horrid things,” and girls are no longer considered “too silly for anything,” and it soon became evident that, of the three friends, Doris was by far the most mature socially. She was undoubtedly a pretty girl, with big blue eyes, fascinating hair of an amber tint, and a skin like a rose-leaf—a belle and a flirt in her demure, village fashion long before her sixteenth birthday.
Cynthia, to her languid mother’s discontent, but her father’s secret satisfaction, was at the same age a long-limbed, lanky, boyish-looking girl, with decidedly boyish manners, and only the frankest and least flattering interest in the ruder sex. As for Stella, the country youths admired her from a distance, while she, for her part, had no time for them.
“I do despise long skirts; they get in your way so!” Sin complained, as the three were scaling a friendly stone wall on a pleasant Saturday in the following spring, taking their favorite “short cut” to Wolcott’s Woods.
The others laughed. “You do act just like a boy in petticoats,” reproved Doris. “You don’t seem to know how to manage them a bit. There—you’re caught again!” as Cynthia sprang recklessly from the top of the wall, to the accompaniment of a sharp sound of rending cloth.
“I don’t care!” Sin was bent on braving the matter out, and, to her friends’ horror, she calmly tore off a long strip of blue serge and threw it away. “Nonsense; I never mend. Daddy’ll give me a new skirt out of the store any time I ask him. I hate clothes, and I hate sewing. I’m sure I don’t know why I was born a girl.”
“What shall you wear to the dance?” asked Doris of Stella, as they strolled lovingly side by side. Cynthia, her friends thought, was in a mood that would best be ignored.
“My dotted swiss, I suppose; do you think it will do?”
“Mother is making me a new silk muslin—pale blue; and I’ve got a sash to match and new slippers. It’s two inches longer than my last.” Doris’ voice was full of innocent satisfaction. “You look perfectly stunning in white, Stella,” she added, generously. “And you’re the best dancer of anybody in our set. Isn’t she, Sin?”
Mrs. Waring had insisted upon giving Stella two terms of dancing lessons, with the others, much to her sister’s disgust; and here the native grace of the Indian girl stood her in good stead. It must be admitted that, if she did not particularly care for boys, she did love dancing; it was almost like flying, she thought.
“Um, h’m,” assented Sin, who was born without a sense of rhythm, and never seemed to know what to do with her arms and legs. “I don’t see what either of you want to dance for, though; I hate it, myself. Catch me going to their old party! Give me a warm corner and an interesting story, when it’s too dark to go out. Scotty! Come here at once—here, sir!”