"You see," Happie explained, "this is a girl of our own age, or about that, whom Gretta knows; it isn't like a stranger, or a full grown teacher! And won't it be funny to see us so solemn and dignified, and Gretta talking Dutch 'yet,' as they say up here, and the girl teacher not knowing her? And then to see her face when she finds us out?"
"It certainly will be very funny, and I really don't believe there can any harm come of it; it is only a prank," said Mrs. Scollard.
"That's all, you clear-sighted motherums!" cried Happie joyously. "And I may ask Rosie for her satchel?"
"I have another for Gretta, a queer-shaped affair that looks as if it came out of the original ark," said Miss Bradbury, whose pleasure in this proposed visit was refreshing to behold.
The next day Happie and Gretta met at the appointed place, each laden with the fantastic fruits of their gleaning. They began to dress with ecstatic giggles, each helping the other to assume incongruous garments of various sizes and dates. It was not long before the giggles gave place to peals of laughter until both girls got quite weak from mirth, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the toilets were completed.
Gretta wore a skirt of ante-bellum days. Its fulness hung many-folded around her tall figure, for lack of the hoops originally intended to set it out. Over this she wore a remarkably short bolero jacket of a not-much-more recent period; its rounding front and very abbreviated back revealed a striped waist of bulging fulness, fastened by black china buttons fully an inch and a half in diameter, decorated with bright pink roses and blue morning glories. Her thick dark hair Happie made into an immense knot half way up her head, twisted so tight that it stuck out "like a chopping block," Gretta herself said. This resolute-looking coiffure was surmounted by a broad-brimmed hat, trimmed with green ribbons and a band of black velvet, both much the worse for wear, while a discouraged feather drooped, guiltless of curl, over the brim on the left side.
Happie's costume expressed a more chastened spirit than Gretta's. Her skirt was as scant as Gretta's was full, and went off in a long train with narrow ruffles curving themselves into waves around the bottom. Its color was a faded brown. Over this hung a coat, apparently intended to go with the immense fulness of Gretta's skirt. It went out into deep plaits from each seam, and its sleeves might almost have made a jacket as large as Gretta's; full at the top were they, standing out in great plaits after the fashion of the time of its present wearer's birth. It had been a dark blue; it was still blue, in spots, but yellowish streaks ran down the folds of its many plaited skirt and sleeves, and its velvet collar was white along its edges. Happie's hat was a bonnet. It was straw, broad in the crown and narrow in the brim. Its trimming was a ribbon originally black, but now greenish; however, its bows drooped in a manner more mournful than any mere blackness could have made them. A bunch of perfectly straight thin ostrich feathers adorned this bonnet's front, while on the left a bouquet of faded violets, ranging from soiled white to dubious purple in color hung disconsolately by their untwisted green cambric stems. As a last touch, and in case they should remove the thick brown and dark blue veils which were to disguise them, the girls had wet red ribbon in ammonia and daubed their cheeks with it. The vivid crimson gave a lurid effect to their faces in spite of the fact that Happie's rippling hair had been forced into severe smoothness over each temple, and knotted low in her neck under her travesty of a bonnet, as near to the manner of a decorous old woman as such hair could be made to go.
As soon as they could tie the veils over their remarkable headgear, pull on their wrinkling gloves, and control their laughter sufficiently to walk straight, the girls started out across the fields and down the road towards the schoolhouse. It was encouraging that Jake Shale passed them with his slow team without recognizing them; they saw him turning around on his seat to look after them as long as they were in sight, wonder and speculation written on his usually impassive countenance—as well they might be.
Arrived at the schoolhouse they pulled themselves together, brought their satchels to the fore, and Gretta, saying with a sharp indrawing of her breath: "Now for it!" knocked on the door. It was opened by an exceedingly small boy in knickerbockers that had the effect of scallops, the legs were so short.
"Dare we see the teacher?" asked Gretta with so good a Pennsylvania Dutch accent that Happie's shoulders shook under their manifold plaits, and she nearly betrayed herself by an audible giggle.