"Don't you think Alice would look very nice in one of these?" said Kathleen, gazing with a very earnest face at Mrs. Tennant.
"Pink is more Alice's color. She is too pale for blue," was Mrs. Tennant's reply.
"Well, then, look here. Isn't this a perfect duck? See for yourself. It's a sort of cross between a coral and a rose—oh, so exquisite! And see how it is made, with all these teeny tucks and the embroidery let in between. And the sleeves—aren't they just illegant entirely? Don't you think we might make her wear it?"
"I am sorry, Kathleen, but you are not getting on very well with Alice. I wish it were different. Could you not do something to propitiate her?"
"Wisha, then, darling!" said Kathleen, pausing a moment to consider; "that's just what I can't do. Alice's ways are not my ways, and if I copied her it's kilt I'd be entirely. She never likes to see a smile on my face, and she can't abide to watch me if I dance a step, and she wouldn't take a joke out of me if it was to save her life. To please Alice I'd have to be the primmest of the prim, and always stooping over my horrid lessons, and the end of it there'd be no more of poor Kathleen O'Hara—- it's dead and in her grave she'd be, the creature. Indeed, I'm glad I'm not made on Alice's pattern, even if she is your daughter. I can't aspire to anything so fine and high up even for your sake, darling, and you are one of the sweetest women on God's earth. I couldn't do it—not by no means."
Mrs. Tennant could not help laughing as Kathleen described the sort of girl she would be if she adopted Alice's role.
"But the question is now," said the girl, "what are we to do to make her have some of these pretty things? Mightn't I give the blouse to you first, and you could give it to her? She'd look so sweet in this pink blouse when
she went to tea at her chosen friends. She'd be almost pretty if she was nicely dressed. I've got this white one for little Ruth Craven, and I want Alice to have this so badly. Can't you manage it, dear Mrs. Tennant?"
Mrs. Tennant felt tempted. The blouse was very dainty and pretty, and unlike anything she could afford to buy for her only daughter. Kathleen threw her arms round her neck and kissed her.
"You will—you will, dear Mrs. Tennant," she said. "It is yours entirely. You tell her you got it at a cheap sale. Say you went to a jumble sale and bought it; you paid one-and-twopence-halfpenny for it. That's the right figure, isn't it, for the best things at a jumble sale? Tell her it's quite new, and was thrown in promiscuous like."