"Well so am I," declared Rosemary. "I don't think any one is very bright who isn't."
"That's because you don't know anything about snakes," said Sarah, salting a boiled egg hurriedly. "Snakes are the best friends the farmer has."
"My teacher's name is Miss Farmer," chirped Shirley sunnily. "And we have pink and red and blue crayons to draw on the blackboard with."
"Take another sandwich, darling," Rosemary urged her. "You're sure you won't get tired this afternoon? You went home at noon every day last year, you know."
"Yes, but I'm six now," Shirley reminded her sister. "Will we have home work in our room, Rosemary?"
It was one of Shirley's ambitions to have "home work" to do, and she longed to take a book home at night as Rosemary and Sarah did.
"I don't know—I shouldn't think so," answered Rosemary absently. "Sarah, Nina Edmonds wears her hair pinned up and no hair-ribbon."
"Well she looks crazy anyway, so what difference does it make?" was Sarah's comment on this news. "You can't go without a hair-ribbon, Rosemary, because your hair will all be in your eyes. Hugh said Nina was trying to be grown up and I guess she is."
But that night Rosemary spent half an hour before her mirror, trying to coax her bobbed curls into a knot like Nina Edmonds'. Rosemary's hair was growing very fast and she had promised Doctor Hugh not to have it cut again. Just now it was an awkward length, but its curliness redeemed even that. Nina's straight blond locks were strained into a tortuous knot at the nape of her neck, for she, too, had decided not to bob her hair again. It was the absence of hair-ribbon that particularly appealed to Rosemary, for she had "spells" as Winnie called them, of wishing to appear grown up. At other times she was satisfied to be what Doctor Hugh insisted she should be content to be for several more years, "just a little girl."