"It's beautiful lace—a lovely pattern," spoke Belle, as she picked it up from the table. "I don't see how Inez carries them all in her head," for Cora was working out a model set for her by the Spanish girl.
"Nor I," said did Bess, "It's perfectly wonderful."
She glanced at Cora, who had gone to stand by another window to watch for signs of clearing weather, that, of late, had come with more certain promise.
"There! I think that will do!" announced Bess, as she cut off the silk thread. "I wonder if we shall ever get to the point where we can go without stockings, as the Spanish ladies do here."
"Do they?" asked Cora, absently. "I hadn't noticed."
"They do indeed, my dear," answered her chum. "I read about it, but I didn't believe it until Inez took us to call on Senora Malachita the other day—Belle and I—you didn't come, you know."
"I remember."
"Well, my dear, positively she didn't have any stockings on—only slippers, and she received us that way. Belle and I had all we could do not to laugh, and I wondered if she could be so poor that she couldn't afford them, though her, house, was beautiful, and the plaza, with its fountain and flowers, a perfect dream.
"But Inez told me that often even the well-to-do Spanish ladies here don't wear stockings, unless they go to church or to a dance. Even then they don't put them on, sometimes, until just before they go into the church. We saw one, riding in on a donkey. She stopped just outside the church, and put on her stockings as calmly as though they were gloves."
"Fancy!" cried Cora.