The four girls groaned. "Such a pale, feeble little jokelet!" sighed Bab. "Take it to the hospital to be measured for crutches."
"Here's your collar. Run away and play with the other little boys; we're busy. By and by, if you're good, we may let you take out bastings," said Phyllis.
"Jupiter! That sounds familiar," sighed Tom. "My mother used to say just that when I was seven. Much obliged for the collar. When you want me for the bastings sing out, and I'll pardon your impertinence in consideration of service rendered." And Tom disappeared.
"Phyl will do very well with the blue, then," said Ruth, resuming practicalities. "What are your prospects, Other Two?"
"I had this gray, and I loved it," said Jessamy, smoothing a chinchilla-trimmed jacket fondly. "I think it isn't hurt at all, and I shouldn't dare touch it."
"There's a spot on the back where you leaned up against something greasy, but French chalk will make it all right," said Ruth, issuing her mandates from her perch like a mounted general at the head of an army.
"Mine was brown, with mink," said Barbara, sadly; "but I spilled something, sometime—I don't know what or when—on the front of the skirt, and I don't see what you can do with it; I haven't a smidge of the goods."
"A what?" murmured Ruth, absent-mindedly, wrinkling her brow over the problem. "Tailor-made or not, we shall have to rip that skirt and put in a breadth of something else; and it will never look right—No, I have it!" she cried, interrupting herself and sliding to her feet with a triumphant little shout.
"Eureka, Miss Archimedes! What is it?" asked Phyllis.