"Bessie, you look fine! And how clever of your mother to get you up so awfully smart! I was simply horrified when I learned your character. For you're Maria, the waiting-woman, aren't you?"
"Yes; but mayn't waiting-women wear pretty clothes? This frock's only lawn, and cost thirty cents a yard."
"Bah! the price doesn't count; it's the color and the way it's made," said Hortense, walking off to more effectively study her friend's costume; and again came the words, more slowly this time, "Yes, you look fine; your dress seems a veritable French flower-bed."
"Who are you, Hortense?" and a wounded look came into Bessie's eyes, while she added, "I think you might have told me, since you knew who I was."
A light laugh followed, and then the words, "I'm ashamed of you if you cannot guess; surely you've read Twelfth-Night?"
"I have never read any of Shakespeare's plays; mamma thinks I'm not old enough. I don't believe half the children here have read it."
"Then how have they known the way to dress?"
"Their mothers or big sisters have told them, of course. I know what Twelfth-night means, for mamma explained that it was an old festival held twelve days after Christmas, and that it was a season of revels, dances, and the most comic of ludicrous games. I wish we got more fun out of our holidays. Mamma says when she was a girl Christmas used to last all the week. You know her home was away down South; and if people could spare time for a week's fun then, why can't they do so now? Besides, mamma told me many of the English people still keep festivities going from Christmas until Twelfth-night. I don't believe in letting England get ahead of us, even if she has the word 'merrie' tacked to her. When you came in, Hortense, I thought you were a boy, and wondered how you got into this room."
These words proved very amusing, and Hortense craned her neck haughtily while she promenaded before the pier-mirror, saying: "So I look like a boy, do I? Well, that's good; precisely the way I want to look, for I am a boy to-night; I'm personating Viola, and I may as well explain. She made believe she was a boy, and called herself Cesario, and got a lot of fun out of it too. So I'm really Viola, but call me Cesario."
They had just come to a Twelfth-night party, given by a dear friend two years their senior, and, as may be assumed, there had been considerable chattering between the knots of girls, assembled in recess hours, about their comical clothes; but there had also been considerable secrecy, as no one seemed very desirous to tell what she was going to wear; then, too, the boys were unusually quiet, and everybody wondered whether they were to dance, play games, or what was to be done anyway.