"You girls may run off and show Mary the grounds," suggested the hostess. "I have to attend to some business with these men."
Mary still wore the white dress, of some open wrought material, like drawn work, and not usually made up into frocks. It was soft and clinging, and her velvet ribbon wound around the waist fell in an artistic sash clear to the end of her full skirt. Her braids were unbound and finished in their own natural curls, this tendency to really curl having been hailed by the girls as worthy of an entirely different mode of hair dressing.
Ginghams for mornings, as customary, gave the other girls quite a different appearance, and in a stolen moment, while dressing, Cleo managed to show Mary a scout uniform. The simple khaki outfit seemed to Mary the most remarkable "rig" she had ever seen, even books had not given her such an idea of a practical girl's uniform.
The polite dismissal of Mrs. Dunbar's followed just as two very business-like men stepped into the oaken hall.
"Do you remember about your basket?" Madaline asked. She was wildly wondering if the live thing had crawled away.
"Oh, yes, indeed. I am going to it directly. Come on, girls, till I show you my pet."
Everyone thought of snakes, varied with a pretty baby bunnie, or perhaps a bird's nest of helpless fledglings, but Mary's pet was none of these.
Out on the small window nook, just off the breakfast room, she found the basket quite as she had left it. The girls watched her eagerly as she first drew out a soft white covering. It was now becoming apparent that this self-same Mary possessed an entirely undeveloped sense of humor, for as she watched the eager faces crowding about her she was surely, deliberately delaying the process of displaying her "pet."
"Guess!" she asked naïvely.
"A snake!" from Grace.