“I only know what’s in the trunk we already opened,” Marjorie told her. “These are the old, old trunks.” She pointed to two little trunks standing side by side. “After the fashion show we’ll go through them carefully for clues. The other boxes all contain things of ours that we’ve put away so we wouldn’t clutter up the house with things we didn’t need.”
Half an hour later the girls appeared on the porch and marched sedately up and down, hoping they were behaving like professional models.
It was all Penny could do to keep from laughing. To her they looked as stiff as wooden puppets in a Punch and Judy show.
“What period are you representing?” Brook’s mother asked, suppressing a smile. “Jane Austen?”
Marjorie relaxed enough to shrug. “We haven’t the faintest idea, Mrs. Sanders. Let’s pretend that the audience has to guess.”
“All right,” Mrs. Sanders agreed. “I’ll stick to Pride and Prejudice.”
“I’d say that the black velvet was of the nineties, after the big sleeves and hideous bustles had gone out,” Mrs. Powell said.
Mrs. Curtis thought it was of a later period. She laughed and said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if those bustles came back in again. I’m afraid they wouldn’t look quite as cute on us as they do on those two young ladies!”
Mary told them she thought the blue satin dress was meant to be worn with hoops and was probably from a period dating near the Civil War.
“Let’s go see if we can find the hoop,” Marjorie said, taking Judy by the hand and heading back to the storeroom.