“You’re wonderful!” said Gladys enthusiastically. “You’re actually stunning! Whoever told you to get that particular shade of blue to bring out the color of your hair?”
“Nobody told me,” answered Katherine. “I bought it because it was a bargain.” But there was a knowing twinkle in her eyes which gave her dead away, and Gladys, seeing it, knew that Katherine had at last achieved that pride of appearance which she had struggled so long to instill into her.
“However did you do it?” she murmured.
“It was your eleven Rules of Neatness that did it,” replied Katherine, laughing, “or was it seven? I forget. But I did do just the things you told me to do, and it worked. There is no longer any danger of my coming apart in public! What a trial I used to be to you, though!” she said, flushing a little at the recollection. “How you ever put up with me I don’t know. How did you stand it, anyway?”
“Because we loved you, sweet child,” replied Gladys fondly, “and because we all believed the motto, ‘While there’s life, there’s hope.’ We knew you would be a paragon of neatness some day as soon as you got around to it. You never could think of more than one thing at a time, Katherine dear!”
“O my, O my, look at them hugging each other!” exclaimed a teasing voice from above. Looking up they saw Justice Dalrymple leaning over the banisters at the head of the stairs. “You never do that to me,” he continued in a plaintive tone.
Katherine and Gladys merely laughed at him and walked on, arm in arm, and Justice came down the stairs wringing mock tears out of his handkerchief and singing mournfully,
“Forsaken, forsa-ken,
Forsa-a-a-ken a-m I,
Like the bones at a banquet