CHAPTER IV
ON HER WAY
“Just for a lark,” Barbara told herself, “I’ll take the old cap and gown. We are sure to dress up after we undress, and I really haven’t a decent robe.”
A robe! If she only could have known how this particular item had bothered the other girls, especially Ruth Harrison. The cap and gown which Barbara had decided to take, “just for a lark,” were sent her last winter by Marjorie Ellis who achieved them in a brief stay at college and wanted to forget she had ever heard the word. Marjorie hated college now, she had been so homesick while away in Connecticut, that she absolutely refused to return at mid-years, and because she knew Barbara would love even to play at being a collegian, Marjorie sent her the mortar-board hat and the big black cape, they poetically call a gown.
Often had Barbara dressed up in the college clothes, especially at night when she would parade around in the enfolding comfort of that soft, black robe. It was this habit, no doubt, that gave her the idea of fetching the costume to Cara’s party. This and the necessity of having something to throw on over her pajamas—how lucky that she had the pajamas!
Packed at last and her misgivings quieted, Barbara ventured a look at herself in the old-fashioned mirror that hung between her room and the sitting-room.
“I guess I’ll do,” she told the reflection. It showed a tall, finely formed girl, with a head held high—Barbara’s head couldn’t get enough of sky gazing—and wearing a sport suit that Dora, the maid of all work, had helped her make.
“Good material and not a bad fit,” the girl secretly commented, for the natty little jacket was made of bright green flannel, and the skirt of white flannel had a matching stripe of green. Her blouse was white, bought ready made, and a little white felt hat had been picked up at Asbury Park; not picked up on the beach, however, but at a bargain counter very late last fall. So that the costume was quite complete and decidedly effective.
Of course Barbara’s hair was bobbed, and because of a little ripple that huddled around her ears the bronzed, glossy tresses framed her face in a most attractive way. Barbara seemed dark and her blue eyes were often taken for brown. Her brown hair might be called brunette, if one didn’t see the bronze tones that came in certain lights.
And she wore her clothes well. That was why her own amateur efforts, supplemented by the not unwilling but always protesting Dora, usually turned out well. So she had no fear for the effect of her sport dress upon her arrival at Cara’s party; it was the robe and the party dress and other accessories that bothered her somewhat.
“Cara’s car is coming out this way, Dads,” she told her father as she picked up her bag, “so they’re going to stop for me.”