When they were done dressing they gazed at each other in admiration.
“I never had as pretty a dress in my life!” said Winona delightedly, surveying the folds of rose-colored organdy that ruffled about her. She reached up as she spoke to fasten back her curls with the shell barrette that usually held them at the back of her neck.
“Glad you like them!” said Miss Lawrence, appearing on the threshold of the next room. “They belong to my niece Nataly—I suppose you know Nataly if you live next door to her—but she hasn’t had them yet. I brought them to her from my trip abroad. Here, Winona, you haven’t any hair-ribbon.”
“I haven’t been wearing any in camp,” said Winona, standing still, however, while Miss Lawrence unclasped the barrette and supplied its place with a rose-colored satin ribbon tied about her head, fillet-fashion.
“That’s the English fashion,” said Miss Lawrence, “wear your hair loose till you’re sixteen or seventeen, then do it all up at once, instead of pulling it up by degrees, as we do here. It’s very becoming, my dear.”
Winona privately felt that it was a little youthful, but she said nothing, and indeed the effect of the shower of curls falling loose from under the ribbon was exceedingly becoming.
Louise, over by the mirror, continued to put pins into her hair, and Miss Lawrence did not try to super-intend her toilet at all, though Louise was getting herself up to look as near twenty as she could.
A knock at the door of the sitting-room, where they went when they were dressed, made them all turn.
“Come in,” said Miss Lawrence.
“It’s me, Billy,” said his voice ungrammatically inside. “I say! What stunning clothes!” he added frankly as he took in the splendor of the girls’ attire.