Conn began to dress hurriedly. What should she put on? Her white dress hung in the closet,—such a white dress as girls wore then,—all delicate ruffles, and with a blue ribbon sash, as dainty-fine as possible. She knew that was meant for afternoon, when Aunt Sarah would have company. But might she not put it on now? Perhaps Jack wouldn’t be here then, and she could be careful. So she slipped into the dainty gown, and fastened hooks and buttons in nervous haste, and then looked in the glass, as every other girl that ever lived would have done in her place.
It was a bright, fair face that she saw there—all pink and white, and with those violet eyes over which the long lashes drooped, and that soft, bright hair that lay in little rings and ripples round her white forehead, and hung a wavy mass down to the slender waist which the blue ribbon girdled. Conn was pleased, no doubt, with the sight she saw in the mirror,—how could she help being? She tripped downstairs, and out of the door. Jack whistled when he saw her.
“What! all your fineries on at this time of day? What do you think Mother Sarah will say to that?”
The pretty pink flush deepened in the girl’s cheeks, and she answered him almost as if she thought she had done something wrong,—
“I’ll be so careful, Jack. I won’t spoil it. By and by you’ll be gone; and I wanted to look nice when I saw the new pistol.”
This seemed extremely natural to Jack. The pistol was to him a matter of such moment that no amount of demonstration in its honor would have seemed too great. Viewed in this light, it really appeared quite a meritorious act that Conn should have put on the white dress; and he looked her over with that air of half-patronizing approval with which boys are apt to regard the good looks of their sisters and their cousins.
Then he exhibited the pistol. It had—as a boy’s knife or gun or boat always has—distinguishing and individual merits of its own. No other pistol, though it were run in the same mould, could quite compare with it, and it was by some sort of wonderful chance that he had become its possessor. Conn wondered and admired with him to his heart’s content. Then came breakfast, and then the marching of the Brighton Blues. This was a company of boys in blue uniforms,—handsome, healthy, wide-awake boys from fourteen to seventeen years old,—every one of them the pride of mothers and sisters and cousins. They were to march into Boston, and parade the streets, and dine at a restaurant, and see the fireworks in the evening, and I don’t know what other wonderful things.
Conn stood and watched them.—Page [129].