“Do it up high, Etta; it is so hot today! I hope Mother will decide to go to the mountains soon!”
“Just as soon as your brother comes home, Miss Cathalina. I heard her say so yesterday.”
“Last year he met us there!” Cathalina replied, somewhat fretfully.
“Yes, but he is not going back next Fall, you know, and there’s all his things to come here. And then your mother said that she isn’t sure where she will go until she sees him and finds out what he needs and where he wants to go.”
“O, Phil’s always well,—I wish I were!” Cathalina looked mournfully and pityingly in the mirror, where she saw a pretty, delicate face with shadowy, dark blue eyes. A tear threatened to splash over as Cathalina thought what a dull, disagreeable world it was. A miserable piano lesson at ten o’clock, and she supposed she’d have to practice a while before; a party the next day, or was it this afternoon?—and the girls would be offended if she did not go. Always the same old thing anyhow!
Etta quietly took the blue silk kimono that Cathalina had slipped off and brought in exchange a dainty morning dress of fine, sheer lawn.
Cathalina’s bedroom was a beautiful setting for the fair little maid of fourteen years. When the new home was being finished a year before, Cathalina herself, with some direction from her mother, had chosen the blue, white and silver decorations and selected the furnishings. What pride she had taken at first in the delicate effects, the simple, though expensive, fittings. But she was tired of it all now.
As Etta fastened the dress, Cathalina said, with the shy little smile that she always had when she spoke intimately, “I was so cross, Etta, this morning when you brought up my breakfast,—please forgive me!”
“O, Miss Cathie,—if you call that cross! What would you think if you heard what I’ve had to put up with?”
“Better not tell me, Etta,” replied Cathalina, who had been taught not to encourage tales of former service. “I might get hints on how to manage you,” she added, with a laugh. “How loose this dress is getting! Just pin over the girdle a little—or get me that other sash that matches, please.” Then both girls turned to listen to sounds of commotion down stairs.