"I'll run up again and finish this after dinner," she said, "and to-morrow you can begin another in class. I wonder, Lethie, if you know how pretty you are? You ought to be dressed in silks and gossamers all the time, like a fairy princess."
A rosy flush dyed Lethie's milk-white skin. "I never had no looks," she said. "You are the one that's pretty—the prettiest ever I seed!"
"In a beauty-show I'd never for an instant hold a candle to you," said Isabel. "Do you mind taking your hair down and letting me see it before I go?"
Lethie unfastened the large knot tightly drawn to the back of her head, and her beautiful pale gold hair fell in a thick shower, almost to her knees.
"Truly a fairy princess!" said Isabel. "Now do you mind if I put it up for you as a fairy princess ought to wear hers?"
She plaited the shining tresses in two large braids, and, leaving the hair loose and waving about Lethie's face, wound the braids about her head coronet-fashion, then held the child off, and gazed at her.
"Lethie," she said, "when I go home, I'm going to take you with me and astonish the Blue Grass with your beauty. I mean it!" as Lethie looked at her breathless. "From this day I'm going to adopt you for a younger sister, and see that your looks are properly set off."
As soon as dinner was over, Isabel returned to work on the dress, and by four it was finished and on Lethie, as were also a pair of Isabel's white canvas shoes and white stockings. Before the two started up the hill together, Lethie gazed at her reflection in the little looking-glass on the porch, with a loudly beating heart.
Isabel managed to see Fult before the playing began.
"Lethie is here to-day," she said; "and must be your partner the first time, and at least half the others."