"I want to ask you a favor, Mrs. Markham," said Golden, blushing very much.
"A favor! What is it, Mary?" asked Mrs. Markham, encouragingly.
Golden glanced down at her blue cashmere dress, which had grown very shabby and worn during the two months she had been in little Ruby's service.
"You see I had lost all my money when I went into Mrs. Desmond's service," she said falteringly, "and I have not received any of my wages yet, and—and I am getting too shabby to be respectable-looking."
That was little Golden's plea, but the truth was that she did not wish her Cousin Elinor and Bertram Chesleigh to recognize her, and so wished to lay aside the blue cashmere which had been her best dress at Glenalvan Hall.
"Oh, you poor child!" burst out Mrs. Markham, "why did you never tell me that before? I see, now; you want me to lend you the money to buy a new dress."
"If you will be so very, very kind," faltered Golden, gratefully.
"I will do it with the greatest pleasure," answered Mrs. Markham, whose purse was ever open to the needy and distressed.
So on the first of September little Golden appeared in quite an altered guise. The pretty, blue cashmere that was so becoming to her rose-leaf complexion was laid aside, and she wore a sober, dark-gray dress, so long and plain that she looked a great deal taller and older. She had pinned a dark silk handkerchief high up around her white throat, thus concealing its fairness and graceful contour. She had fashioned herself a huge, abominable cap that hid every wave of her golden hair. Dark-green spectacles were fastened before the bright, blue eyes, and with her long, tucked, white apron, little Golden made the primmest-looking nurse-maid that could have been imagined. She looked in the mirror and decided that no one who had known her at Glenalvan Hall would recognize her now.
But little Ruby exclaimed dolorously at her strange appearance: