Aunt Grace, when she saw the costume, said it would be very easy to alter it to fit Roger. And he stopped in for a few minutes the next Saturday morning—he didn’t dare stay long, for he was supposed to do most of his farm work on Saturday when there was no school—and Aunt Grace made him put on the costume while she went all over it and marked it with pins where she was to make it smaller or shorter.
“Suppose something happens to it?” Roger kept asking nervously. “I never wore silk clothes—they must be expensive. Suppose somebody spills something on me?”
“Let ’em spill,” said Uncle Hiram calmly. “I’ve had that Chinese costume for twenty years or so and it’s never done anybody a bit of good; it’s high time it began to earn a little interest. You wear it Roger, and if you tear it or sit down on an apple pie, I won’t say a word.”
Aunt Grace hunted through her things and found three little masks—“dominoes,” she called them. These went across the eyes and Elizabeth Ann didn’t think they were much help. She was sure that anyone would know her if she didn’t cover up more of her face than that. But when she looked at herself in the glass with her domino on, she was forced to admit that she didn’t look at all like Elizabeth Ann Loring.
“Why I might be Doris,” said the astonished Elizabeth Ann. “And Doris looks as much like me as she looks like herself. Perhaps dominoes are good masks, after all.”
Of course Elizabeth Ann was interested in her own costume. Now that she knew Roger was provided with something to wear, Elizabeth Ann could plan for herself and Doris. And she decided that they would go to Catherine’s party dressed as two little black cats.
“It’s easy,” said Elizabeth Ann when Doris said she didn’t see what they could wear that would make them look like black cats. “Aunt Grace will make us the suits out of that old black coat she has—she said the other day she meant to cut it up for carpet rags. And we’ll wear white gloves and our white canvas shoes and that will make us look as though we had white paws.”
The old black cloth coat proved to be even better for cat costumes than Elizabeth Ann had suspected. For it was a material called zibelene and was covered with short fine hairs. You can see how cloth like that would make excellent cat fur for little girls to wear to a party.
Aunt Grace cut the costumes very much like the sleeping garments some children wear in winter—with long sleeves and legs that came down to the ankles. She made caps, too, with little perky ears that stood up. Elizabeth Ann and Doris had brought their white canvas shoes with them, but getting gloves was a more serious matter. Finally Uncle Hiram drove to town and bought them each a pair of the white canvas gloves that farmers use for much of their work. These of course were miles too large for the little girls, but clever Aunt Grace—who could do practically anything with a sewing machine or her needle—ripped the gloves apart, cut them to fit, and sewed them up again.
It did seem as though Hallowe’en would never come. The children at school talked so much about the party that Miss Owen said she was afraid they wouldn’t have anything to say to each other when they met at Catherine’s house. And Miss Owen said, too, that it would be better if they paid a little more attention to their lessons, and that she certainly could not excuse boys and girls who didn’t make any attempt to do their homework.