It was on this afternoon that she brewed a dye of walnut juice and carried it in secret to her room. She had loosened her braids and was about to plunge her head into the basin when Mrs. Ambler came in upon her. “Why, Betty! Betty!” she cried in horror.
Betty turned with a start, wrapped in her shining hair. “It is the only thing left to do, mamma,” she said desperately. “I am going to dye it. It isn't ladylike, I know, but red hair isn't ladylike either. I have tried conjuring, and it won't conjure, so I'm going to dye it.”
“Betty! Betty!” was all Mrs. Ambler could say, though she seized the basin and threw it from the window as if it held poison. “If you ever let that stuff touch your hair, I—I'll shave your head for you,” she declared as she left the room; but a moment afterward she looked in again to add, “Your grandmamma had red hair, and she was the beauty of her day—there, now, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
So Betty smiled again, and when Virginia came in to dress for supper, she found her parading about in Aunt Lydia's best bombazine gown.
“This is how I'll look when I'm grown up,” she said, the corner of her eye on her sister.
“You'll look just lovely,” returned Virginia, promptly, for she always said the sweetest thing at the sweetest time.
“And I'm going to look like this when Dan comes home next summer,” resumed Betty, sedately.
“Not in Aunt Lydia's dress?”
“You goose! Of course not. I'm going to get Mammy to make me a Swiss muslin down to the ground, and I'm going to wear six starched petticoats because I haven't any hoops. I'm just wild to wear hoops, aren't you, Virginia?”
“I reckon so,” responded Virginia, doubtfully; “but it will be hard to sit down, don't you think?”