And the puffing Rosalind executed a series of jumps, in lieu of running, which seemed too much to expect of her, and this bore out the fat girl’s good intentions.
“I do every earthly thing I can, you know,” confessed Rosalind, as they stood before an open door, “but I can’t see that it does one bit of good. I’m—hoping—you may have—a secret—recipe—” Breath giving out, Rosalind gave in, and sank down on a big chintz covered chair.
“I don’t see why you worry about being fat, Rosa,” said Nancy with real sincerity. “Here I’m too thin and mother keeps worrying about that all the time—”
“Oh, what an idea!” chuckled Rosalind. “We can be the Before and After sign—fat and thin, you know. Wouldn’t that be great?” and as she laughed Nancy remembered another familiar sign. It was to do with laughing and growing fat!
“Shall I change for dinner?” Nancy asked when the gale of mirth subsided and Rosalind stood before a mirror patting her turbulent hair.
“No-o-o!” drawled Rosa. “Just put a ribbon around your head and that’ll be all you need to do. Dad won’t be home tonight—he’s in Boston, and Betty” (she whispered this) “is never home when Dad’s away. So a ribbon will fool Margot, and after dinner—” A queerly pulled face, that made a pincushion out of Rosa’s features, finished the sentence. Evidently she had some important plans for after dinner.
As they “fussed up” Nancy noticed how really pretty Rosalind was. Her eyes were always laughing and they were blue, her mouth was always smiling and it was scalloped, and her hair was “gorgeous,” being a perfect mop of brown curls rather short but not bobbed. It was this head of hair that from baby hood had distinguished Rosalind, for her “lovely curls” were a matter of family pride to all but herself.
Her weight, however, could not be denied, even by one so favorably prejudiced as Nancy, for Rosalind Fernell was decidedly fat, as has been said before. She wore just now a one-piece dress of very brightly colored summer goods, with the figures so mixed up that Nancy remembered her brother Ted’s calling this style “circus clothes.”
Nancy, disregarding Rosalind’s suggestion for a ribbon around her head to make up a dinner costume, had managed to slip into the simple white voile that her mother was so solicitous about having exactly on top of her bag, so that she could slip into it quickly, and this with the yellow ribbon band around her dark hair completed, rather than composed, the costume.
“You look perfectly duckie,” declared Rosalind, giving her cousin a frankly admiring glance. “And I’m glad you did dress up, for maybe Gar will be over.”