“I shall enjoy her,” said sweet Aunt Truth, with that bright, cordial smile of hers that was like a blessing. “She has a very loving heart, and is easily led. How pretty the girls look, and how different they are! Polly is like a thistledown or a firefly, Margery like one of our home Mayflowers, and I can’t help thinking my Bell like a sunbeam.”
The girls did look very pretty; for their mothers had fashioned their camping-dresses with much care and taste, taking great pains to make them picturesque and appropriate to their summer life “under the greenwood tree.”
Over a plain full skirt of heavy crimson serge Bell wore a hunting jacket and drapery of dark leaf-green, like a bit of forest against a sunset. Her hair, which fell in a waving mass of burnished brightness to her waist, was caught by a silver arrow, and crowned by a wide soft hat of crimson felt encircled with a bird’s breast.
Margery wore a soft grey flannel, the colour of a dove’s throat, adorned with rows upon rows of silver braid and sparkling silver buttons; while her big grey hat had nothing but a silver cord and tassel tied round it in Spanish fashion.
Polly was all in sailor blue, with a distractingly natty little double-breasted coat and great white rolling collar. Her hat swung in her hand, as usual, showing her boyish head of sunny auburn curls, and she carried on a neat chatelaine a silver cup and little clasp-knife, as was the custom in the party.
“It’s very difficult,” Polly often exclaimed, “to get a dress that will tone down your hair and a hat that will tone up your nose, when the first is red and the last a snub! My nose is the root of all evil; it makes people think I’m saucy before I say a word; and as for my hair, they think I must be peppery, no matter if I were really as meek as Moses. Now there’s Margery, the dear, darling mouse! People look at her two sleek braids, every hair doing just what it ought to do and lying straight and smooth, and ask, ‘Who is that sweet girl?’ There’s something wrong somewhere. I ought not to suffer because of one small, simple, turned-up nose and a head of hair which reveals the glowing tints of autumn, as Jack gracefully says.”
“Here they come!” shouted Jack from the group on the Howards’ piazza. “Christopher Columbus, what gorgeousness! The Flamingo, the Dove, and the Blue-jay! Good-morning, young ladies; may we be allowed to travel in the same steamer with your highnesses?”
“You needn’t be troubled,” laughed Bell. “We shall not disclose these glories until we reach the camp. But you are dressed as usual. What’s the matter?”
“Why, the fact is,” answered Geoffrey, “our courage failed us at the last moment. We donned our uniforms, and looked like brigands, highway robbers, cowboys, firemen,—anything but modest young men; and as it was too warm for ulsters, we took refuge in civilised raiment for to-day. When we arrive, you shall behold our dashing sombreros fixed up with peacock feathers, and our refulgent shirts, which are of the most original style and decoration.”
“Aboriginal, in fact,” said Jack. “We have broad belts of alligator skin, pouches, pistols, bowie-knives, and tan-coloured shoes; but we dislike to flaunt them before the eyes of a city public.”