Daisy needed no second intimation. She bounced out of her chair, agile and untired as though it were morning and she just up. Then she paused a moment, and her face fell a little.
"My skirt is all right," she said, "but I have no clean waist."
Jean paused; knuckles reflectively akimbo.
"What's y'r size, lassie?" she said.
"Thirty-eight."
"Thirty-eight," Jean's eyes opened; "losh, ye're fu'-breastit for a bairn. I doubt a waist o' mine wadna be much aboon yir fit. I'm wide across; but ye're fair wide too, an' then ye come out in front forbye. Gie your face a dicht off whilst I rummage my trunk."
A little less than half an hour later, Daisy,—her serge skirt brushed by Jean's friendly hand to an appearance of almost newness, and wearing a silk waist of Miss McTavish's that, with a few shrewd tucks here and there, had been reduced to fit Daisy's round, plump torso—came dancingly out between the stone gateposts at the end of the Harrison drive. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. Every nerve tingled with the zest of life.
As she reached the sidewalk, a battered auto was just about to turn in the gateway through which she had come. At her appearance, however, the driver came to a halt.
"Hello, stranger," he said, sociably, "where d'ye think you're going."
Daisy, who knew how to "use her eyes," assumed an expression which, just fitted the occasion.