Meanwhile, I was to be dressed.
I had just got on my blue morocco slippers, that looked so funny with my striped dark calico morning-frock, when the bell, that I thought I had done answering with the silver fees, rang loudly again. Marcella, our housemaid, called me from the foot of the nursery stairs.
“It’s somebody for you, Miss Emmeline,” she said, and I thought she meant another man for money. I took the last quarter from the little wallet father had filled for me, and ran down. But it was the tall black servant from the Hunters. And he had in his hand a pretty paper box tied with a silk cord.
“Mrs. Hunter’s compliments and love, miss, to you and to your ma; and she hopes you’ll wear something she has made for you just like Miss Elizabeth’s, to-day.”
I took the box, made a little courtesy to him, and said, “Please thank Mrs. Hunter, and say I wish her a happy New Year, and here’s a happy New Year for you.” For I thought he couldn’t help seeing the silver quarter, and thinking it was for him; and father had told me to “use my judgment,” and I certainly wanted to give it to him the minute I saw he had come all the way with a present for me. Elizabeth and I liked Jefferson very much; he gave us macaroons and prunes and almonds from the pantry, and he swung us in the swing in the great drying-room. He made me a fine bow, and thanked me, and said he should keep my quarter for luck.
So I ran up to my mother, and kissed her—for somehow whenever anything pleasant came to me I always kissed my mother—and we opened the box. It was a beautiful blue silk braid net, with a long blue ribbon run through to tie it round the head with.
“O, mother!” I cried, “it’s a long ribbon, for flying ends!” I was so glad; for I had no curls like Elizabeth’s and I thought flying ribbons would seem like them a little, and I had never worn any.
“It is very pretty,” said my mother; “but I think, dear, with your short hair, a short bow would look better.”
She did not tell me that my face was narrow and my nose was long, and that I couldn’t possibly look like Elizabeth Hunter, even with flying ends. I know it now, as I have found out a good many things that I didn’t understand at the time.
I was disappointed; too disappointed to say anything; and before I spoke, mother, who had put the net over my hair, and drawn the ribbon, tied a butterfly bow with it over my left ear, and snipped the ends into short dovetails with her small bright toilet scissors.