"I like blue," said Rosemary wistfully.
"Let's ask Aunt Trudy," suggested Sarah.
"I think you're awfully foolish to try to make anything," pronounced Aunt Trudy when they consulted her. "But I suppose, if you have set your hearts on it, why nothing will dissuade you. Why don't you make your mother a white kimona, and bind it with pink ribbon? White was always her favorite."
So it was decided the kimona should be white eiderdown and bound with pink satin ribbon and Rosemary and Sarah and Shirley went shopping one afternoon after school and bought the materials. Their purchase included a pattern, the first in their joint experience and when they had spread it out on Rosemary's bed the three girls looked at it helplessly.
"We'll put it on paper, till we learn how to cut it," said Rosemary, secretly wondering how anyone ever learned to understand such complicated directions as were printed on the pattern envelope.
They had decided that neither Aunt Trudy nor Winnie could be allowed to help them and since Rosemary had a working knowledge of the sewing machine's mysteries and could sew neatly by hand, they had not anticipated any trouble.
"But how could we know a pattern was such a silly thing?" wailed Rosemary, tired and cross when the dinner gong sounded and they had made no progress. The floor of the room was littered with paper and the top of the bed resembled a pincushion for Shirley had amused herself by sticking the contents of the entire paper of pins in orderly rows on the counterpane.
"Aren't you coming down to dinner?" asked Sarah, moving toward the door.
"No, I'm not," retorted Rosemary. "I'm not hungry and I don't want anything to eat. Don't let Winnie come up here making a fuss; you tell Aunt Trudy I don't want any dinner to-night. I'm not going to do a thing till I get this kimona cut out."
"Hugh will be mad," said Sarah, half way down the hall.