"Look at Susie Darrow," whispered Kat, under cover of her lowered hat. "All tricked out in silk, and a little gipsy bonnet, with a white plume; and she's been smiling at me every minute, and Ralph thinks she's the biggest goose out. I'll tell her so."
"No, goodness no; let her smile if she wants to, she'll soon find out that it's no use," answered Kittie. "There's Sadie Brooks too, she's been in New York, and has got an eye-glass, dear sakes alive, just watch her use it, will you?"
"Good morning girls, you look a couple of daisies;" said Mrs. Raymond, going by with a nod and a smile. "You and your cousin, are to go in our carriage, the girls want you," and away she went, like a busy happy soul that she was.
"The Raymond girls look sensible," said Kittie, with an air of approval; "see they have on short dresses, and big hats; I think Lou is prettier than Clara, don't you?"
"Rather," answered Kat, too much taken up in watching her former play-mates, to notice others. Susie Darrow had been to boarding-school, Sadie Brooks to New York, and May Moore was going to the sea-side next month; so they were all much uplifted in mind and manner, and took unto themselves the airs of thoroughly initiated society-ladies.
"Girls?" said Miss Brooks, with her little affected drawl, and raising her eye-glass in her lavender kid-fingers. "Which ones do you mean, I do not quite understand?"
"Those two under the big tree," replied her questioner, a visitor in Canfield. "Twins they are, in the big hats."
"Oh! Yes." Miss Brooks's eye-glass went slowly to the place indicated, and took a leisure survey. "You mean the little girls in calico dresses; they are the Derings, I believe, but really, being in the city so long, I find I am quite forgetting old faces."
"Indeed," was the reply, with a respectful air, though the desire to laugh was almost irresistible. The little girls in calico dresses were fifteen, and taller than Miss Brooks, who was just sixteen; but then, dear me, she had on a train of party length, bushels of banged hair, a little wisp of a bonnet, and little fine black marks along her lower eyelid, so altogether she looked about twenty, and was perfectly satisfied with herself. She could not look ahead to the dissatisfaction that would be hers when she became twenty, and looked to be twenty-eight.
When they started, ten merry carriage-loads, everybody stood in their doors, and hung over the front gates to see them off, for Canfield was a social little place, and felt a deep interest in anything going on within its limits; so if good wishes could make a successful day, surely they would have it.