CHAPTER XVIII
THE PINK DRESS
Mrs. Porter was Miss Barry's prop and stay in matters regarding her niece, and she turned to her when succeeding days revealed the fact that Linda had set out deliberately to spoil the "help."
The mistress of the house left the kitchen one morning after her plans were perfected for dinner and sought Mrs. Porter. She could hear the faint buzzing of the sewing machine which lived by the front window in the hall upstairs.
She ascended with a firm tread. "This is a shame," she announced warmly, as she stood beside her friend, viewing the lengths of silky soft pink stuff which were running beneath the swift needle.
"What's a shame?" asked Mrs. Porter, without stopping her work.
Miss Barry sat down in a chair opposite her.
"That you should be penned up in the house this beautiful morning stitching away hour after hour. You were doing the same thing yesterday."
"It's fun," returned Mrs. Porter.
"Oh, fun!" scornfully. "You always say everything's fun – walking to the village when Blanche Aurora has carelessly forgotten something, going out in the rain to take in the towels she's overlooked – everything's fun with you."
Mrs. Porter smiled without raising her eyes from her fine seam.
"I don't believe you ever taught music eight hours a day," she said.
"Where's Linda?" demanded Miss Barry, but she lowered her voice. She still regarded her niece as an uncertain quantity, possibly dangerous.
"Gone to Portland."
"For the land's sake!" ejaculated Miss Barry, her tone no longer sotto voce. There was no danger of Linda's hearing from the trolley car. "What takes her there?"
"Sh!" warned Mrs. Porter, still with her gay smile. "Underclothes for the little girl, I think. I'm only guessing."
"Now, look here!" responded Miss Barry. "Where is this going to stop? I understand Blanche Aurora better than any one else does. Doesn't Linda suppose I take any care of her? She's high-headed enough by nature. She needs a strong hand, and I've held a tight rein over her on principle. She's a loud, stubborn, willful young one who thinks she knows it all."
"I'm not sure, I'm not sure," replied Mrs. Porter. "I kept her here nights while you were gone and I used to read to her in the evening – 'Little Women' and 'Heidi,' and so on. She was very gentle and nice and seemed to enjoy it."
Miss Barry sighed.
"I've had her two summers with me. This makes the third. I've taught her quite a little about cooking and I've nearly lost my immortal soul doing it; and I've taught her to be neat. Yes, Blanche Aurora's neat. I ain't afraid to eat after her. I've taught her to take proper care of herself, to brush her teeth and to use plenty of soap. I give her plenty of soap; and such things are enough to give her. This!" Miss Barry picked up a fold of the soft pink and rubbed its thinness between her fingers. "Why, she'll catch it on a nail the first day and it'll be in slithers in no time, and her taste for good tough calico will be gone too."
"There's plenty of pink calico," suggested Mrs. Porter. "It's color that makes the difference to a child."
Miss Barry continued to regard the zephyr gingham gloomily. That frenzied defiance, "Pink's happiness," seemed to sound again in her ears.
"Linda's just going to fill the child's head full of notions and make her discontented," she declared.
"Perhaps she has been more discontented than you realized," suggested Mrs. Porter. "Anyway, Miss Barry," she added, stopping the machine and looking up, "I fancy we are more interested in Linda than in any one else just now. Aren't we?"
"Well, of course, we are," acknowledged Miss Barry grudgingly, realizing whither the admission tended.
"To provide her with a wholesome interest is no small matter."
Miss Barry sniffed. "I don't know how wholesome it is. Blanche Aurora's as insubordinate a young one as ever lived. I'd hate to have her think any more of herself than she does already. All these expensive clothes now, and then next winter, nothing. That ain't going to help her mother any."
"That black-and-white checked suit can be made warm," returned Mrs. Porter, beginning to stitch the hem of the pink dress.
"What started her on it, anyway?" asked Miss Barry. "'Taint a mite like anything I ever knew of Linda."
Mrs. Porter smiled at her work for a silent space.
"Linda has been born again in some ways," she said at last. "In the school of this world you must have noticed that if people's eyes are not opened by truths vital to right living, they have to learn by suffering. Linda has suffered greatly. It has softened her heart. In this little experience right here she shows she longs to do something for another: to make the lot of another happier. This humble little girl happens to be to her hand."
"Humble! Not so you'd notice it," commented Miss Barry.
"I feel as if we could just lend a helping hand and be thankful."
"Of course, I'm glad she's stopped moping," admitted Miss Barry; "but I don't yet see what started her out on this. It really isn't Linda's business." The speaker was still smarting under the invasion of what she considered her own private and particular territory.
"Oh, I'm not so sure. We are our brother's keeper after all and our little sister's too."
"It don't do them any good to make them vain," declared Miss Barry. "However," she added, "Blanche Aurora's as homely as a mud fence. I don't know as there's much danger."
"Sh! Sh!" warned Mrs. Porter.
"Oh, she's outdoors, she won't hear me."
"You ask what started it," said Mrs. Porter. "Linda's awakened observation and her desire to add to the sum of happiness might have done so, but it really was Blanche Aurora's own thoughtfulness that did it." And Mrs. Porter told the story of the daily wild rose.
"Of all things," remarked Miss Barry when she had finished. "Well, I certainly never would have thought that of that sharp little thing."
"We're none of us such sharp things as we seem," returned Mrs. Porter.
"I don't know how it is with you," said Miss Barry presently, "but I think a great deal about that poor Mr. King," and her long earrings swung in a challenge.
"I do, too," returned the other quietly.
"Linda's clothed now and in her right mind, as you might say. I think instead of dressing dolls it would be more to the point, if her heart's so soft, if she'd write that young man a letter with some human kindness in it."
Mrs. Porter looked out over the sea which seemed as ever ready to encroach on the cottage and carry it off in triumph.
"Perhaps she has done so," she replied.
"No, sir. I don't believe it," was the energetic response, earrings swinging in the strong head-shaking. "If she had, he'd have answered, and I've seen every letter that's come to her. I know his writing."
"No one sees it very often," said Mrs. Porter, stitching steadily. "I should feel much easier if he would write to me, yet I don't urge it because I won't add a straw to his burdens."
"Well, I don't see how Linda, with some of the memories she's got of her own actions, can have the heart to think of clothes instead of trying to atone for her injustice."
"We don't have to take care of that," said Mrs. Porter. "I love Bertram so dearly that I've had something to meet, to conquer resentment; but the last thing we need worry about is that people won't get sufficient punishment for their mistakes. The law is working all the time, and when we strike against it until we're sufficiently hurt we turn to the gospel: Love."
"H'm," grunted Miss Barry. "Lots o' folks don't seem to get hurt. They just go ahead and flourish like the green bay tree."
"You don't see far enough," returned Mrs. Porter, smiling, "that's all. Everything isn't finished when we're through with this world; but many times you can see the working right here."
"I'd like to," snapped Miss Barry sententiously.
Mrs. Porter finished her hem and drew the dress from the machine. It had a tucked skirt, and narrow fine embroidery edging the sailor collar and cuffs. She shook it out and held it before the other's eyes. "Pretty, isn't it?" she said.
Miss Barry made some inarticulate response, arose, and went into her own room. She had some calico in her lower drawer now, designed as a parting gift to her "help" when the summer should be over. It was stone gray with white spots.
A little color burned in her cheeks as she opened the drawer and looked at it.
"Sensible and suitable," she said to herself: "sensible and suitable. She'll be glad enough of it some day when those flimsy things are in ribbons."
It was supper time when Linda returned from the city, and as soon as Blanche Aurora had done the supper dishes she always went home.
She kept her eyes on Linda, while she was waiting at table to-night, as nearly all the time as possible; and this evening there was no change in her expression; but she too had been listening for several days to the delectable music of the sewing machine. She had even been fitted to the pink and blue dresses and she saw them in a heavenly mirage floating above dishes, washtubs, and scrubbing-pails.
To do Miss Barry justice she never allowed the child to do any heavy work, and the latter's laundry efforts were limited to the dishtowels.
From three to five every day Blanche Aurora had two hours to herself; but she was expected to remain within call and to answer the door.
She had enjoyed the high happiness, therefore, of doing some of the ripping on these gowns of a millionaire's daughter which were designed to clothe her own slight form.
The way her ears listened for Linda's call now at three o'clock of an afternoon, and the celerity with which she obeyed the voice and fled up the back stairs, every freckle on her expectant face seeming to radiate, was observed by her mistress.
All the morning of the day following Linda's visit to Portland she received rebukes from Miss Barry for slap-dashing, as that lady called it.
Blanche Aurora felt, in every one of her small but evident bones, that the pink dress must be finished. Mrs. Porter had promised her that it should be the first one in hand. She panted for three o'clock to arrive while Miss Barry gave her sundry dissertations on the wear and tear on solid silver when whacked together and the sinfulness of chipping goldbanded china.
"You know I told you," she warned, "that I bought a stock set on purpose this summer, so that I could replace everything you break and take it out of your wages. You have fair warning."
"Yes'm," replied Blanche Aurora with the loud pedal down. She was possessed by a recklessness of anticipation. What did she care for wages! What had they ever brought her comparable to the treasures, unearned, which had descended upon her from a paradise named Chicago where a Cape boy had been able to pick up a million dollars in the golden streets!
It was her experience that three o'clock did finally come every afternoon; but this day was evidently going to be an exception.
At dinner, the weather being unusually warm, Linda looked like a dark-haired angel in a plain gown of white crêpe de chine. Blanche Aurora was faintly disappointed because her quiet manner was just as usual. Surely, if her dream was to come true, and to-day was the day, Linda and Mrs. Porter couldn't behave as if nothing had happened.
Wandering about within sight of the cottage, those vacation hours were the ones during which the little girl found the perfect wild rose designed for Mr. Barry's picture. She carried it always to the room at the back of the house which was hers, and where she slept when Miss Barry wished her to stay all night.
There was a closet there, curtained off, where her waterproof and rubbers and umbrella reposed in bad weather, and a dark calico dress also hung there in case she got wet and had to change. Three hooks in the middle of the closet had lately attained significance. No human being could be cruel enough to ask another to be separated from the new dresses all day by leaving them at home. Besides, her sister Letty was almost as tall as herself. She would be sure to try on those sacred habiliments and wear them all around the neighborhood. The thought was paralyzing.
Although Blanche Aurora was quite certain several times between one-thirty and three that the clock had stopped, it did finally laboriously drag its hands around until they looked like the legs of a ballet-dancer she had once seen on a circus poster. It was actually three o'clock. She tiptoed toward the stairs. No sound.
"If I don't get the rose I'm afraid I'll forgit it," she soliloquized. So she went out the back door and around to the front of the house to a great rock under whose lee some rosebushes cuddled out of the wind. The minute she felt herself out of sight of Linda's window, however, she panted back for fear by some tragic mischance her fairy godmother might call, and receiving no answer imagine that she had gone home for an hour as Miss Barry sometimes gave her permission to do.
Finally, after much darting back and forth, Blanche Aurora secured the rose, and returning to the house, placed it as usual in a glass in her own room to wait for the morning.
As she emerged she heard her name called at the head of the back stairs.
She landed on the lower step in two leaps.
"Yes, Miss Linda," she answered, the heart under the outgrown gingham going like a triphammer.
"I want you now."
It was as the voice of an angel in the yearning ears.
"Yes, ma'am," and Blanche Aurora ascended, two steps at a time. Her dingy sneakers would not have bent daisies had they been growing upon the staircase.
CHAPTER XIX
THE WILD ROSE
As the panting little figure approached and hesitated in her doorway, Linda turned from some white stuff she had been piling on the bed and met the round, expectant eyes, "Come here, Blanche Aurora," she said. "I want to show you something."
With long steps the beneficiary was beside her.
"Here are some things I found for you in Portland yesterday."
Blanche Aurora dragged her gaze from the pink and blue dresses that were lying there, finished, and beheld white underclothing, and large enveloping aprons – a pink-and-white checked one, a blue-and-white checked one, and one all white in a satiny-looking plaid. There was also a pile of stockings and some black low shoes and white sneakers. A bride, inspecting a complete trousseau just arrived from Paris, might experience in faint degree the elation that choked Blanche Aurora now.
"For me?" she uttered mechanically.
"For you, you good little thing," said Linda. "Now take these, and go into the bathroom and put them on."
Like one in a dream, Blanche Aurora accepted the underclothing, stockings, and sneakers put into her arms, and marched toward the bathroom, her head held high and the fishhook braids quivering down her gingham back. She went in and closed the door.
Linda smiled, and seating herself in her wicker rocker clasped her hands behind her head.
Mrs. Porter came to the door.
"What did she say?" she asked, smiling.
"Oh, nothing. She's far beyond speech. What did you do with Aunt Belinda?"
"Mrs. Lindsay arrived and Miss Barry is showing her her rockery and the ferns, so I thought she was safe and I'd come up for the fun."
"You certainly deserve to." Linda sighed unconsciously. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if everybody could be made happy so easily! I believe that is the only satisfaction there is in the world, after all – making others happy, whether you are so yourself or not."
Mrs. Porter came in and took another of the wicker chairs.
"I don't believe you can avoid the latter if you do the former," she remarked.
Linda regarded the speaker, a line appearing in her smooth brow. She often suspected Mrs. Porter to be thinking of Bertram. She had no right to ask impossibilities. The superhuman should not be required of the merely human.
"It is easier said than done, though, as a usual thing," said the girl aloud. "There is one man in Chicago, for instance, to whom I owe much kindness, whom I couldn't make happy except by marrying him."
"Not Bertram," returned Mrs. Porter quickly.
"Of course not Bertram," said Linda coolly.
"It may be some relief to you to know that Bertram no longer wishes that," said Mrs. Porter, after a moment of silence.
Linda's lip curled as she kept her lazy attitude, her hands clasped behind her dark head.
"Of course not," she repeated. "Bertram may make business mistakes occasionally, but he will not commit that of marrying a poor girl."
"Linda!" ejaculated Mrs. Porter. Color rushed over her face and she waited a moment to gain control. "How can you insult him in his troubles!" she finished.
"Please forgive me," returned the girl in the same tone. "It is the hardest thing in the world for me to remember your relationship."
"Your thinking it is quite as bad as saying it."
"Be fair to me, dear Mrs. Porter. You can't blame me for not having illusions, after my sledgehammer blows."
"You can feel compassion instead of hatred, if any one has wronged you."
"That isn't human nature."
"Of course not. We have to learn that we can't have any respect for human nature. Spiritual nature is the only thing we must nurture. We don't have to take care of punishing those who have wronged us. 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.' In other words, the working of spiritual law brings inevitable punishment to all who violate it. We may well exercise compassion instead of hatred to wrongdoers. If Bertram has, humanly speaking, deserved all the contempt you send him, you can well afford to feel more kindly toward him than before. Nothing but his own repentance and amends can end his punishment; and rest assured you do not need to add to it."
"Mrs. Porter," – the girl dropped her nonchalant attitude, – "I meant it when I asked you to forgive me. If I lost your friendship I should lose the greatest treasure I have left."
"You won't lose it, poor child," was the response, as the deep color faded from Mrs. Porter's face. "You strain it when you speak so of Bertram, but I have to remember exactly the truths I have been telling you."
"That I shall be punished?"
"Assuredly, dear child – just as far as you are wrong."
Linda leaned forward suddenly and laid an affectionate hand on the other's knee.
"But I'm right, dear," she said, her eyes bright.
Mrs. Porter patted the hand in silence and the bathroom door slowly opened.
Blanche Aurora, looking very young indeed, clad in white, with white arms and neck, and tanned face and hands, stood with the old plaid gingham over her arm. Her gaze fled to the bed, then returned to the rusty plaid. So might a butterfly regard the chrysalis from which it had just emerged.
"Do I put this on again?" she asked.
"No," returned Linda. "Fold it and put it on that chair over there."
Light scintillated in Blanche Aurora's eyes as she obeyed; a light which boded ill for the faded gingham.
Linda rose and placed a chair in front of her dressing-table.
"Come here and sit down," she said.
Blanche Aurora hesitated but for an instant before complying.
"What be you goin' to do?" she asked as Linda lifted the tortured braids and inspected the white string. "Goin' to cut my hair off?"
"Do you want me to?"
"I don't care. It's only a bother, anyway. I have to braid it every few days."
"Every few days? Oh, Blanche Aurora, you ought to brush it every night."
"I should worry," ejaculated the other. "Red hair don't deserve anything like that. If I didn't have red hair I wouldn't have so many freckles and I'd look nicer in the pink dress. I pinch it good when I braid it," added Blanche Aurora savagely.
"I should think you did," returned Linda, whose deft fingers were meanwhile unbraiding the hair and removing the disciplinary string. "It is kinky enough to stuff a little mattress. You have a nice lot of it. Mrs. Porter, will you hand me that box at the foot of the bed? I'm glad I remembered to get you these." And Linda opened the box, displaying a white brush and comb which she began using on the bright hair while its owner colored with excitement through all her tan at the possession of such grandeur.
She sat silent, watching in the glass the amazing vision of Linda combing and brushing the freed locks which seemed making the most of their escape to fly in all directions and encircle the excited face with a bright aureole. Linda turned and smiled at Mrs. Porter, who nodded appreciation. Many a fine lady would gladly pay a small fortune for the luxuriant shining waves that rippled now under Linda's brush.
"I suppose your hair is straight," she said.
"As a poker," agreed its owner promptly. "I douse it good when I have to braid it over and you'd better too, Miss Linda. You can't never braid it the way it is now; and it likes to git the best of you."
The speaker eyed her halo vindictively. Her hair was an ancient enemy and only her mother's commands had protected its existence.
"When did you wash it?"
"Last week. I don't never wash it winters, but summers Miss Barry makes me."
"You don't need to wash it often in this clean place; but brush it a lot with your white brush. Will you, Blanche Aurora?"
This was a more awful demand than Linda realized. Overwhelmed as she was with benefits her beneficiary demurred.
"I can't only once in a few days."
"But you're going to braid it every day now."
"Oh, Miss Linda," was the aghast response. "I ain't got time. I couldn't! You don't know my hair. It acts as ugly as sin; jest as if it knew it was botherin' the life out of me. I have to git the children off to school – "
"Not now."
"Well, not now; but Miss Barry wants me the middle o' May, and I have to git over early – "
"Yes, but it's July now."
Blanche Aurora ceased protesting and winced.
"Oh, did I pull? I'll be careful."
"Pull it good if you want to. Good enough for it."
"You must like your pretty hair," said Linda.
"Pretty!" uttered Blanche Aurora.
Of all the surprising things that had happened to her, that adjective was perhaps the most surprising.
"Certainly it is, and it deserves good treatment."
Blanche Aurora looked in the mirror at her friend's face. Could Linda, every tiny escaping hair of whose wavy locks curled in a curve of beauty, – could she call this red stubborn mane pretty? Then there was no more to be said.
Blanche Aurora leaned back and studied the narrow trimming on her new clothes and rubbed her hard hands surreptitiously against the soft fabric of her white petticoat. Linda divided the modified waves of hair into two parts.
"Now your hair will soon straighten out," she said. "Let it stay straight and smooth and well-brushed."
"I'd like curly hair like yours," returned Blanche Aurora; "but I guess I'd pretty near die tryin' to comb it."
Linda smiled. "You remind me of the tramp who said he didn't see how folks stood it to comb their hair every day. He did his only once a year, and then it most killed him. Now, you mustn't strangle your hair with that string any more," she added.
"Strangle it! I think that's real funny," said Blanche Aurora judicially. She was radiant. There was only one small cloud on her horizon and that was the prospect of a daily wrestle with that hair. That hair! Why, angels couldn't go through it and keep their religion.
"Now, see what I'm doing?" said Linda. "You'll be glad to do this when you see how nice it looks."
With round and solemn gaze Blanche Aurora watched the braiding of first one half and then the other of her captured locks.
"Be sure to begin as near the middle of your neck as you can."
Linda swiftly doubled the two ends of the braids and fastened them.
She looked at Mrs. Porter again as the fluffy braids hung down the slender back, and again Mrs. Porter nodded.
"Miss Barry wants 'em tight," declared the child.
"Miss Barry will be satisfied with this," rejoined Linda. Then she proceeded to cross the braids and wind them around the small head, tucking the ends out of sight with hair pins. This loosened the hair at the temples and the round eyes took in the fact that the arrangement was becoming even to freckles; but the breath-taking moment was to come.
Linda opened a box on her dresser and revealed a fresh pink and a blue ribbon. She took out the pink one and soon a generous bow surmounted those braids, and Blanche Aurora gasped with pleasure. Her white, low-necked, short-sleeved reflection with the new coiffure held her happy gaze, and when Mrs. Porter brought the pink dress and slipped it on and buttoned it up, the red beneath the freckles was very deep, and the modern Cinderella was speechless.
At last she turned to Linda and threw her slender arms around her.
"I can't say nothin'," she gulped.
Linda pushed her gently back and took hold of the hard hands and her eyes were soft with an inner flame as they looked down into the glistening ones.
"I can say something, Blanche Aurora," she answered kindly. "I can say that you look like a wild rose. Do you understand?"
She put her arm around the happy girl and led her to the small table where stood her father's picture, and blooming before it, the child's offering. "Like a wild rose, Blanche Aurora," she repeated slowly.
The pink-crowned head lifted to her. "Oh, Miss Linda," she exclaimed breathlessly.
"Now, then," said the fairy godmother in a different tone, "you have a chest of drawers down in your back room; and after a while I want you to put white paper in them and come up and get these things," waving a hand toward the bed. "But first you go down and see Miss Barry."
"I'm 'most afraid," declared Blanche Aurora, wringing her hands together. "She thinks a pink dress and red hair is awful."
"She won't," returned Linda. "Run along. I think she's outdoors. Yes, I see her there, stooping over the rockery. Mrs. Lindsay has gone and she's alone."
Blanche Aurora left the room. She even forgot the chrysalis and her determination to kick it into the ocean. Seraphs, wafted on rosy clouds, forget such earthly longings.
Mrs. Porter and Linda stood at the window where they could see all that occurred, and despite Linda's assured words she was not sure that she wished to hear what would be said. Her college chums would have recognized Linda Barry again in the mischievous sparkle of her eyes.
Miss Barry, rising from her labors among the ferns, beheld a bareheaded little girl coming slowly toward her. The stranger was clothed in a pink dress with spotless white stockings and sneakers, and as she advanced the sun turned to gold the fluffy hair under a billowy pink bow.
Miss Barry pulled her spectacles down from the top of her head, and even then for a second she thought some summer boarder was straying too far from home. In another moment full recognition burst upon her.
"For the land's sake!" she exclaimed; and the two stared at one another for a silent space. It would have taken a hard heart to resist the beatified, yet shy, expression on the face of Blanche Aurora, and Miss Barry's was not hard.
"Pink's happiness. Pink's happiness!" Miss Belinda saw the statement exemplified.
"Come here, you little monkey," she said.
It wasn't so pleasant to be called a monkey as a wild rose, but Miss Barry's smile was different from any her "help" had ever yet received from her. Perhaps she liked monkeys.
Blanche Aurora came nearer, aware every moment of the fine materials touching her skin.
"Well, well, so my niece hasn't got by the doll-dressing stage," said her mistress.
The lenient tone restored confidence and unloosed an eager tongue.
"Oh, Miss Barry, I ain't a doll. I'll work just as hard. I'll work harder. I've got aprons to cover me all up and I won't break a dish nor slam the silver. The aprons is the most beautiful you ever see and these stockings they feel just like silk."
The reference to the stockings flowed forth because Miss Barry was stooping and running her hand down the slim leg.
The watchers above were edified to see her lift up the pink skirt and examine the underwear.
"You're good clear to the bone," declared Miss Belinda at last, approvingly. "Pretty sensible things, considering that Linda bought them."
The speaker rose again to her full stature and looked curiously at her maid's head.
"What under the canopy – " she began slowly. "Have you got a wig on?"
The broad wavy braids, glinting in the sun as Blanche Aurora turned her head, seemed to bear no relation to the strained tightness usual over her temples.
"No'm, it's my same horrid red hair, but I don't look at it, I look at the pink bow," was the eager response. "The kids at school was always teasin' me," – a gulp of hurting memory interrupted the speech, – "they said I was the homeliest girl on the Cape, and it's nice for homely girls to have somethin' pretty on their heads so folks can look at that instead of at them."
"H'm," returned Miss Barry, touched by the ingenuous burst. She had never suspected her willful help of feelings. "Well, you certainly look very nice, and I'm glad that you're happy."
"Oh, Miss Barry, may I put some of the white shelf paper in the burer drawers in my room? Miss Linda told me to, and I'm to go back and get the rest o' the clo'es and and fix 'em nice in the burer."
"You're going to keep them here, are you?"
"Don't you think I'd better?" Blanche Aurora wrung her hands together eagerly.
Miss Barry took a mental survey of the child's crowded home and the small marauders who would be likely to molest her treasures. She nodded.
"Yes, that's best," she agreed sententiously, and instantly there was a pink flash, and a twinkling of white pipe-stem legs across the grass, and Blanche Aurora was not.