“Norah asked for a cat,” he said. “Come on, Twaddles, let’s teach Philip to jump through a hoop. The girls are going to fuss with clothes.”
Meg tossed her yellow hair out of her eyes importantly.
“I have to have the hems of some dresses let down,” she declared. “I grew in the country. Mother says so. ’Sides when you go to school you have to be neat.”
“Nina Mills isn’t neat,” argued Dot, toiling upstairs after Meg, and holding Annabel Lee’s long tail so that she might feel she was having 19 a share in carrying her. “She goes to school, Meg.”
“Well, she’s a sight,” pronounced Meg. “Mother wouldn’t let me look the way Nina Mills does. Look, Miss Florence, we got a cat.”
“If you say ‘got a cat’ in school, Meg, I’m sure something will happen to you,” warned Mother Blossom, bending over the sewing machine. “Miss Florence wants to try the green dress on you, dear.”
Miss Florence Davis was the little dressmaker who went about making clothes for many of the people who lived in Oak Hill. Every one liked her, and she was always as happy as busy folk usually are.
“What a beautiful cat,” she said, stroking Annabel Lee’s fur. “Now I’m sure you’re contented, Meg, with a cat and a dog. Aren’t you?”
“And she’s going to school, too,” announced Dot enviously, sitting down on the floor to watch Meg as she put on the new green dress. “Here, Annabel, come sit in my lap.”