"I bag your white slippers, Judy, if you don't want them," called Rosamond.
"And I want your black beads—"
"Your blue scarf, please, Judy," called Catherine from her room, "I'll be awfully careful of it."
Squeals of delight came from the various rooms where tryings-on were proceeding. "Every one seems happy but me," thought Judith dismally when the borrowers had departed.
What would a Southern costume be like, anyway? Africa? No that would be too hard and she hadn't the least idea how the Australians dressed. South America? India? Was India south? No, it couldn't be, because she had heard Audrey Green of East House describing a perfectly sweet Hindu costume which her roommate was going to wear. Southerner? How stupid of her! Why not a Virginian lady of the Colonial period? Why not? That's settled. Now as to the how; whom could she ask? But no sympathetic friend presented herself and Judith again began to feel aggrieved.
"Hurrah! hurrah!" cried Josephine excitedly rushing into the room. "Jim—my brother—arrives to-night from Alberta and he'll call here to-morrow first thing. I believe," she added in a lower, confidential tone, "I believe I must have been a bit homesick and didn't know it—there'll be letters and messages, and probably a box, too, from home. Oh, I can hardly wait till to-morrow! Jim says Mother is all right, though she misses me dreadfully—you see our nearest neighbour lives fifty miles away, and sometimes she doesn't see a white woman all winter."
"Fifty miles!" repeated Judith in amazement.
"Yes, we have to have a lot of land for the horses, and sometimes Dad is away for several days visiting the outlying parts and Mother gets pretty lonely."
"You're joking, Jo—your father couldn't spend several days travelling on his own farm."
"Not farm, Judibus," said Josephine, laughing, "it's a ranch, and it has to be big, as I said, for the horses."