Donald knew nothing of Margaret or Peggy, and felt incompetent to remark upon them; but he answered Virginia’s questions.
“I used to see them last year at school,” he said, “at the dances and at Commencement. And in the Berkshires, I knew Jack’s sister, Mary. She’s great, Virginia. I hope there are some like her. She’s at some school, but I forget where. Oh, I guess they’re nice. You see, at parties, when they’re all dressed up, you can’t get real well-acquainted.”
“Dressed up!” cried Virginia. “Don, you ought to see the clothes I’ve got! And trunks like closets?—two of them! Aunt Lou bought my things in Chicago for father. He told her to get what I’d need, and when all the boxes came, he grew more and more surprised. He thought they had sent a lot for us to choose from; and when Aunt Lou told him it was only my ‘necessary wardrobe,’ he just sat down and laughed. Then I had to try them all on—six pairs of shoes, and sailor-suits, and coats and sweaters and dinner dresses, and goodness knows what all! It took the whole afternoon. That was the one last week, you know, when I didn’t get to go hunting prairie chickens with you. And Aunt Lou made me walk back and forth in the dinner dresses until I could ‘act natural,’ she said.” She paused laughing, and the boy looked at her, his face troubled.
“I hope all those things and going away off there won’t make you different, Virginia,” he said, a little wistfully.
“Of course, they won’t!” she told him. “I couldn’t be any different, Don. If it weren’t for the fun of wondering about things, I’d never want to go even a little, but it will be new and interesting. Besides, you know Aunt Lou says it’s ‘imperative’ that I go. I heard her say that to father one night this summer. ‘It’s imperative that Virginia go,’ she said. ‘She’s getting really wild out here with just you men, and that woman in the kitchen.’ ‘That woman’ means old Hannah, who’s been so good to us ever since mother died!”
Donald looked angry for a moment. Apparently he did not care a great deal for Virginia’s Aunt Louise.
“What did your father say?”
“He didn’t say anything, like he doesn’t when he’s thinking or troubled; but, next morning, he told me he was going to send me East to mother’s old school. He said he guessed I needed to see different things. Aunt Lou was there when he told me, and she said, ‘It will be the making of you, Virginia,—a very broadening experience!’”
“I don’t think I’d like your aunt very well,” Donald announced bluntly.
Virginia was not surprised. “No, I’m sure you wouldn’t, and I don’t think she’d like you either. That is, she ought to like you, and maybe she would, but she probably wouldn’t approve. She’s a person that doesn’t often approve of things. She doesn’t approve of my shooting, or of Jim teaching me to lasso the steers in the corral; and that afternoon when I wanted to go rabbit hunting with you instead of trying on dresses, I heard her tell father that I was getting to be rather too much of a young lady to ride the country over with you. But father laughed and laughed, and said he’d as soon have me with you as with himself.”