"This will do," she said. "The length is all right, and it does not matter about the rest of the fit."
"Of course not," said Miriam; "and now let us go down. We need not wait to put the rest of the things back."
As Dora was about to go, her eyes fell on an old-fashioned pink sunbonnet.
"If you don't mind," she said, "I will take that, too. I shall be awfully awkward, and I don't want to get cinders or flour in my hair."
When Dora had arrayed herself in the calico dress with pink flowers, she stood for a moment before the large mirror in Miriam's room. The dress was very short as to waist, and very perpendicular as to skirt, and the sleeves were puffy at the elbows and tight about the wrists, but pink was a color that became her, the quaint cut of the gown was well suited to her blooming face, and altogether she was pleased with the picture in the glass. As for the sunbonnet, that was simply hideous, but it could be taken off when she chose, and the wearing of it would help her very much in making herself known to Mr. Ralph Haverley.
For half an hour the girls worked bravely in the kitchen. Dora had some knowledge of the principles of cookery, though her practice had been small, and Miriam possessed an undaunted courage in culinary enterprises. However, they planned nothing difficult, and got on very well. Dora made up some of Miriam's dough into little rolls.
"I wish I could make these as the Tolbridges' new cook makes them. They say that every morning she sends in a plate of breakfast rolls, each one a different shape, and some of them ever so pretty."
"I don't suppose they taste any better for that," remarked Miriam.
"Perhaps not," said the other, "but I like to see things to eat look pretty." And she did her best to shape the little rolls into such forms that they might please the eye of Mr. Ralph as well as satisfy his palate.
Miriam went up to the dining-room to arrange the table. While doing this she saw Ralph approaching from the barn. In the kitchen, below, Dora, glancing out of the window, also saw him coming, and pulling her sunbonnet well forward, she applied herself more earnestly to her work. Ralph came in, tired and warm, and threw himself down on a long horse-hair sofa in the hall.