"There!" cried Lulu, stamping her foot with passion, then dropping into a chair, "I say it's just too bad! She isn't old enough to be my mother, and I won't have her for one; I sha'n't mind her! Papa had no business to marry her. He hardly cares for anybody else now, and he ought to love me better than he does her; for she isn't a bit of relation to him, while I'm his own child.
"And I sha'n't wear dowdy, old-womanish dresses to please her, along with other girls of my size that are dressed up in their best. I'd rather stay at home than be mortified that way, and I just wish I had told him so."
She was in so rebellious a mood that instead of at once changing her dress in obedience to her father's command, she presently rose from her chair, walked out at the front door and paraded through the village streets in her finery, saying to herself, "I'll let people see that I have some decent clothes to wear."
Returning after a little, she was much surprised to find Betty Johnson stretched full length on a lounge with a paper-covered novel in her hand, which she seemed to be devouring with great avidity.
"Why, Betty!" she exclaimed, "are you here? I thought you went with the rest to the 'squantum.'"
"Just what I thought in regard to your highness," returned Betty, glancing up from her book with a laugh. "I stayed at home to enjoy my book and the bath. What kept you?"
"Papa," answered Lulu with a frown; "he wouldn't let me go."
"Because you put on that dress, I presume," laughed Betty. "Well, it's not very suitable, that's a fact. But I had no idea that the captain was such a connoisseur in matters of that sort."
"He isn't! he doesn't know or care if it wasn't for Mamma Vi," burst out Lulu vehemently. "And she's no business to dictate about my dress either. I'm old enough to judge and decide for myself."
"Really, it is a great pity that one so wise should be compelled to submit to dictation," observed Betty with exasperating irony.