The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor

at last-fortu

last changed

house, making preparations for her journey. Most of the time she was not aware that her lips were repeating what her heart was constantly singing, and o

it was a bargain counter they were hanging over, but the remnants of lawn and organdy and gingham were so entrancingly new in design and dainty in coloring, that without a thought to appearances she caught up the armful of pretty thing

hotly for several days whenever she thought of the way everybody in the store turned to stare at her, she still hummed the same words whenever a sense of her great good fortune

h she declared was the color of a wild morning-glory, that a remark of her mother's, in the next room, filled her wi

skin, and makes her look like a little squaw. I never realized how this climate has injured her complexion until I saw her in that

r. Besides, every one she met was tanned by the wind and weather, some of them spotted with big dark freckles. Joyce wasn't. Joyce had always been careful about wearing a sunbonnet or a wide brimmed hat when she went out in the sun. Mary remembered now,

e Mrs. Lee had loaned them was a whole column devoted to face bleaches and complexion restorers. H

lf beautiful, Mary shrank from confiding her troubles to any one. But several nights' use of all the home remedies she could get, failed to produce the desired

had managed to save nearly two dollars. By dint of a button-hook and a hat-pin and an hour's patient poking, she succeeded in extracting five dimes. These she wrapped in tissue paper,

o get the mail she had met him half a mile down the road. So she had ample opportuni

per said that on retiring, it was to be applied to the face like

day they moved to the Wigwam, had faded somewhat in the fierce sun of tropical summers, but they still grinned hideously from all sides. Outlandish as they were, howe

en aprons, she had fashioned herself a mask, in accordance with the directions on the box. The holes cut for the eyes and nose were a trifle irregular, one eye being nearly half an inch higher than the other, and the

f. This is a lot of trouble and expense, but I just can't go to the house-party looking

enteen, and she had been only fourteen, Mary's age, when she made that never to be forgotten visit to the Wigwam. And she would see Betty and Betty's godmother and Papa Jack and the old Colonel and Mom Beck. The very names, as she repeated them in a whisper, sounded interesting to her. And the two little k

he raised herself, then sat there in the darkness scooping out the smooth ointment with thumb and finger, and spreading it thickly over her inquisitive little nose and plump round cheeks. All up under he

uccession of uneasy dreams. She thought that the cat was sitting on her face; that an old ogre had her head tied up in a bag and was carrying it home to change into an apple dumpling, the

he tent every night, she slipped out of bed and stumbled across the floor toward the table. The moon was several nights past the full now, so that at

the mirror of an awful spook gliding toward her, she stepped back, almost frozen with terror. Never had she imagined s

he bounded back into bed and pulled the cover over her head. Instantly, as her hand came in contact with the mask on her face, she real

clothes that she had simply gotten up for a drink of water and dropped the pitcher. All the rest of the night her sleep was fitful and uneasy, for toward morning her face began to burn as

t any rate she had cause to be frightened when she saw herself in the mirror. As she lifted the pitcher from the wash-stand, she happened to glance at the proverb calendar ha

dn't had so much miserable pride, I wouldn't have destroyed what little complexion I had left

that Mrs. Ware decided she must be coming down with some kind of rash. It was only to preve

to let her voice betray the laughter which was chok

l. The advertisement said g-grow b-beautiful while you sleep, and now

eipt for rose balm, that will soon heal those blisters. You would have saved yours

on't know what it is to be uh-ugly like me! I heard mamma say that I was as brown as a squaw, and I couldn

ice. "Everybody can't be a raving, tearing beauty, and anybody with as bright and

e and just a little thin straight pigtail of hair. You're pretty, and an artist, and you're

s cell, and for many days it poisoned all life's honey. Presently she slipped back into the house for a pencil and box of paper, and sitting on the swing with her geography on her knees for a writing-table, she poured out he