"You're a love," said Ruth heartily, appearing at her side, very stunning herself in jade green, with her smooth hair a miracle of shining perfection.
"And you're—different," added Ruth in a slightly puzzled voice, looking her small cousin over with the thoroughness of an inventory. "It must be the hair, Ri-Ri. . . . You've lost that little Saint Susy air."
"But there is no Saint Susy," Ri-Ri interposed gayly, lightly fingering the dark curves of her hair.
Truly—for Johnny—she had done her darndest! Surely he would be pleased.
"If you'd only let me cut that lower—you're simply swaddled in tulle——"
Startled, Maria glanced down at the hollows of her young bosom, at the scantiness of her bodice suspended only by bands of sheerest gauze. She wondered what Mamma would say, if she could see her so, without that drape of net. . . .
"You have the duckiest shoulder blades," said Ruth.
"Oh—do they show?" cried Maria Angelina in dismay. She twisted for a view and the movement drew Ruth's glance along her lithe figure.
"We ought to have cut two inches more off," she declared, and now Ri-Ri's glance fled down to the satin slippers with their crossed ribbons, to the narrow, silken ankles, to the slender legs above the ankles. It seemed to her an utterly limitless exhibition. And Ruth was proposing two more inches!
Apprehensively she glanced about to make sure that no scissors were in prospect.