Part 25 (1/2)
Blue Bonnet saw! She also had visions of Aunt Lucinda if the gown were torn or stepped on, but she couldn't be disagreeable and selfish. She followed the girls on in to Annabel's room.
Sue pushed Blue Bonnet into a chair and began taking the bow off her hair.
”I've been wild to get at your hair ever since I first saw you. You're too old to wear it in a braid. Here, give this ribbon to Carita; she's in the infant cla.s.s yet.”
Annabel opened a box of chocolates and curled up comfortably on the couch, from which vantage she watched operations lazily.
”Part it, Sue,” she said, studying Blue Bonnet's face. ”She has a heavenly nose for it--real patrician. Didn't any one ever tell you that you ought to wear it parted?”
”No--I can't remember that any one ever did.”
”How funny! Your face is made for it.”
Sue brushed the soft fly-away hair, coiling it low over the ears and twisting it into a becoming knot on the neck.
Annabel clapped her hands with delight.
”Didn't I tell you?” she said. ”Here, take this mirror. Isn't it splendid? Why, it makes you look all of twenty. You could go to a Harvard dance and get your program filled in two minutes with your hair like that!”
Blue Bonnet took the mirror and looked at herself from all angles.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”BLUE BONNET TOOK THE MIRROR AND LOOKED AT HERSELF FROM ALL ANGLES.”]
”It is rather nice,” she said, and a rosy flush stole into her cheeks.
”But Aunt Lucinda would never stand for it. I know she wouldn't!”
”Change it when you go home then. But you are too old for hair-ribbons--really you are. Isn't she, Sue?”
Sue thought so--decidedly.
Blue Bonnet picked up the ribbon Annabel had so scorned and smoothed out its wrinkles gently. She hated to give it up, somehow; it linked her to her childhood. She wasn't half as anxious to grow up as Annabel was. She didn't want to look twenty--yet! There was so much time to be a woman.
The five o'clock gong sounded.
Blue Bonnet picked up her things and started for her room.
”Wait--the dress,” Annabel said. She got out the pink organdy.
Blue Bonnet glanced at it shyly.
”If you don't mind, I believe I'll wear my own.”
Annabel looked hurt.
”All right, if you feel that way, of course. Then we won't wear yours.”
She handed Blue Bonnet the Peter Thompson.
”Oh, yes, you will--please do! You are quite welcome. I only thought--- I--you see, I have never worn anybody's clothes in my life. It seems so funny--”