FRECKLES AND TAN.
The next day we were lazy after the excitement of the sail to Cape Henry. All of us slept late and when we did wake, we seemed to be not able to get dressed.
"Let's have a kimono day," yawned Dee. "Zebedee and Miss Cox have gone to Norfolk and there is not a piece of a hemale or grown-up around, so s'pose we just loaf all day."
"That will be fine, not to dress at all until time to go to the hop!" we exclaimed in chorus. There was to be a hop that night at the hotel, to which we were looking forward with great enthusiasm. Zebedee was to meet Harvie Price and Thomas Hawkins (alias Shorty) in Norfolk and bring them back to Willoughby, where they expected to stay for several days. These were the two boys we had liked so much at Hill Top, the boys' school near Gresham, and Zebedee had taken a great fancy to both of them.
"I do wish my hateful, little, old nose wasn't so freckled," I moaned. "I know I got a dozen new ones yesterday,—freckles, not noses. I'd like to get a new nose, all right."
"Me, too!" chimed in Dee. "What are we going to look like at a ball with these noses and necks?"
"Thank goodness, my freckles all run together," laughed Mary, "and the more freckled I get the more beautiful I am," and she made such a comical face that we burst out laughing.
"But look how I am peeling!" said Dum, examining her countenance in a hand mirror. "Now freckles look healthy but these great peelings streaming from my nose make me look as though I were just recovering from scarlet fever. I do wish I could pull them all off before night."
Annie was the only one of us neither tanned nor freckled. Miss Cox had taken on a healthy brown, which was rather becoming to her.
"If you young ladies is begrievin' over the condition of yo' cutlecles, I is in a persition to reform you of a simple remedy that will instore yo' complictions to they prinstine frishness," said Blanche who, coming upstairs with the mail, had overheard our jeremiads on the subject of our appearances.