“I am, I am,” replied the girl addressed as Eileen. “Oh, what a darling! It is so delicious, Marjorie, when it nestles up against you.”
The train slackened speed, drew up at a great station, and the woman, the baby, and most of the other passengers got out. The three girls now found themselves alone in the carriage. The girl at the distant window, the smallest of the three, turned and eagerly faced her companions.
“Well, Eileen,” she began—she shook her finger in the face of the bright, tall girl as she spoke—“if you begin that sort of thing just on the very day when you have left school, if you will insist on wearing those disgracefully shabby clothes, going third-class and taking us with you, when your mother sends us money to travel first, and finally adopting strange babies who happen to be traveling in the same carriage, you will certainly break Aunt Helen’s heart.”
Eileen shrugged her shoulders.
“Not at all,” she answered. “Mother may not like it at first, but she will soon learn to know once for all that
Marjorie and I mean to follow our own bent. Marjorie and I do not intend to wear gay clothes, because we consider finery a sheer waste of money; but as to you, Lettie, it is the greatest pity you are not mother’s own daughter. How exquisitely neat, how smart, you look!”
“Not smart at all, only suitably dressed,” replied Letitia, bridling a little.
She was wearing a very correct traveling costume of dark gray; her bright wavy hair was arranged in the latest and most fashionable manner; little curls and bits of fluffy downy brightness would get out of their confinement and dance round her small, soft face. She was wearing the universal coat and skirt; but a light-blue cambric shirt and a white sailor hat with a broad white ribbon gave distinction to her costume. Her gloves were also white, and her little shoes had smart bows and buckles.
“My dress is only suitable,” she repeated. “Now, your dress, Eileen, is not suitable; nor is yours, Marjorie. To wear what is not suitable is the height of vulgarity.”
“Oh, do listen to her,” said Marjorie, bursting into a hearty laugh. “She is trying to scare us with those old bogy words, as if we minded. Think what it all means, Lettie, before you condemn us so severely. Mother’s money is safe in my purse instead of on my person, and the difference between third and first class means a considerable addition also to my nice, heavy little purse. Who knows in what class we are coming up to town? Who cares to know? Mother is certain not to meet us at King’s Cross, and old Fowler will not see what class we alight from.”