He smiled at her pleasantly, but there was no yielding in his voice.
"When you're sixteen, if you still want them, I'll have nothing to say," he said. "Mother has said you are not to wear them until then, you know, and if I had my way no woman, sixteen or sixty, should teeter about in silly anguish. I can't help it if the girls are skipping five years, Rosemary; as I've often reminded you, the calendar says you are still a little girl."
Rosemary pouted a little, but she did not dare argue, the subject of high heeled shoes having been long one of her secret sorrows. She knew from experience that her brother would never consent to the purchase of a pair and though she mentioned them from time to time, it was without hope of converting him to her opinion.
She was in her room that night, collecting her cooking notes and recipes, in preparation for making out the important menu, when Winnie peeped in. The brown velvet dress lay on Rosemary's bed where she had spread it, the better to admire its charms. It was a new frock and so far she had worn it only twice. Simply made, with a square neck and a touch of ivory colored lace in the form of a vestee and at the bottom of the sleeves, it was the most becoming dress Rosemary had ever had. She knew it, too.
"There's just one thing I want to say to you, Rosemary," announced Winnie earnestly, "and that's this: you have got to make up your mind which is the more important—this dinner or your dress. Because cooking a good dinner takes all the brains a cook has—I ought to know. You can't be thinking about whether you're going to get a spot on your frock or whether the last hook is caught or left open. And if you're too warm, as you will be in a velvet dress in that hot kitchen and you all excited anyway, or if your feet hurt you, you're not going to be able to give your attention to what you are cooking. And I may not know much about teachers, but I imagine they're like anybody else—when they're hungry, a brown velvet dress won't make up to them for soggy potatoes and underdone meat. Miss Parsons is banking on you—likely as not she's told the teachers you're the best cook in the class, and if you serve up a poor dinner, do you suppose looking at your velvet dress is going to make her glad she trusted you? Of course you can suit yourself, and I'm not trying to influence you, because you're old enough to—"
Rosemary rushed at her and hugged her warmly.
"You're a dear, darling Winnie!" she cried affectionately. "I'll stop thinking about what I'm going to wear this minute, and go to work on what I'm going to cook. Miss Parsons hates fussy clothes, anyway, and I'll wear my white linen under my apron and be comfortable. Hugh thinks I'm silly to wear the velvet, I know he does."
"The velvet will keep," said Winnie tersely, "and I'll do up your white linen for you so that it will look like new."
But, left alone, Rosemary could not resist trying on the brown frock. She pinned her hair high, pushing it into a tower-effect with the aid of combs, and added a long string of red beads that almost touched the floor.
"I look so nice this way," she told the reflection in the glass, naïvely. "Why isn't it ever sensible to wear your best clothes when you expect to be busy?"