Winona laughed.
“Why, yes, I do. At least, I’ve often wanted new clothes when I couldn’t have them. But mother says if you can’t the next best thing is to go on wearing what you have, and be so cheerful nobody has time to think what you have on!”
“Nobody ever told me that,” pondered Adelaide, as if it were an entirely new idea to her. “But my mother’s dead, you see. And, anyway, it doesn’t sound as if it could be true. Did you ever try it?”
“Yes,” Winona said, and laughed. “I did—it was funny, too. I was visiting some cousins of mine. I hadn’t expected to stay, and I hadn’t brought a single party thing, and none of their clothes would fit me. They had perfectly lovely dresses. And suddenly we were all invited to a party, and I had nothing but a blue linen; and all the rest of them in the fluffiest clothes you ever saw!”
“Well,” said Adelaide, “didn’t it feel horrid.”
“Yes, it did for awhile,” owned Winona. “But everybody was sitting around as stiff as stiff—you know, some parties are like that at first. And somebody just had to say something. And pretty soon I thought of a game that just fitted in, and asked them to play it. After that I was so busy thinking up games that I never remembered a thing I had on till we got home that night. And I only did then because my cousin Ethel said, ‘Oh, I’ve torn my dress!’ and I said it was queer I hadn’t torn mine, too—and then I remembered that it was linen and wouldn’t tear. We certainly had a good time at that party!”
Adelaide looked at Winona’s shining eyes and flushed cheeks enviously.
“Yes, you could do that,” she said, “and people would be so busy watching you that they wouldn’t know whether you had a flour-sack on or a satin. But I can’t, because I keep worrying all the time about what people think of me.”
“Oh, I should think that would be horrid,” Winona sympathized.
“It is,” said Adelaide, “only I——”