“Take care,” warned Polly, “you will spoil all that ruching.”
“I don’t care,” said Alexia recklessly, with a vicious pull at a refractory bow. “Now, look at that; everything sticks up that should lie down, and flops where it ought to stand out. Oh, dear me! I just had to wear it over to show you before Pickering sees it, and to let off steam, because I don’t want to worry him, poor boy. It’s quite bad enough to pay the bills. Oh, that horrible old Miss Flint! Polly Pepper, what shall I do?”
Polly dropped the brush with which she was brushing out her bright brown hair, and ran over. “I’ll tell you what, Alexia,” she said cheerily, “I think it’s these dreadful bows that are not put on rightly, that make half the trouble,” picking out one of them; “and then she has the shoulder-puffs too big.”
“They’re enormous!” exclaimed Alexia, rolling her eyes to compass them both. “I look just like a toad, Polly.”
“Now, if those were down in the right place,” said Polly, taking little puckers in them, and then standing back to view the effect, “it would make ever so much difference in that gown; you can’t think, Alexia.”
“Well, I begin to see hope for it,” said Alexia, sitting up straight with her usual air; “but when I came in, actually, Polly, I was all gone to pieces, I was so blue. Oh! what were you saying as I came in? I remember now; it was about Joel.”
“I was saying it was such a comfort to think that Joey could go with Grandpapa and Phronsie,” said Polly, flying over to the toilet-table to her hair again.
“I should think so,” cried Alexia, between whom and Joel there had always been a great friendship, though nothing could be farther from their thoughts than to show it to each other. “My goodness me! Joel Pepper is just the most splendid man that ever lived, except Pickering and Jasper.”
CHAPTER XX.
FIRE!
“MISS PEPPER,” Mrs. Livingston Bayley called sweetly but insistently as Phronsie hurried by.