DRESSING UP
"GOT your costume ready for to-night, Judy?" asked Nancy one glorious
sunshiny morning a few weeks later.
"I have _not_," came from Judith in dismayed tones; "I absolutely forgot
about it. Why didn't you remind me? I haven't heard any one mention it
all week."
"Well, there hasn't really been time to do anything, has there? And,
anyway, we usually concoct something at the last minute. I do love
dressing up, don't you?"
"I do if I don't have to make up the dress," said Judith honestly, as
she finished making her bed and leaned out of the window to take deep
breaths of the glorious October air. "Nancy, do come and look at the
maple grove, and the oaks and the beeches against that lovely sky, and
isn't the vine on Miss Meredith's house simply a gorgeous colour? I
could almost eat the sunshine, it's so good. Tell me what to wear
to-night. I don't know what I should have done without your help last
Friday."
"Let's think it over," said Nancy, pulling on a sweater and cap and
running off to play tennis with Jane; "see you at recess and we'll
decide then."
But when recess came Judith confessed to not having given it a thought,
she had been kept too busy for the consideration of such frivolities as
a Friday party, and Nancy on her part had a doleful tale of returned
lessons to be made up during the afternoon.
"Oh, _why_ didn't I prepare that French prose?" she wailed when the crew
of the "Jolly Susan" foregathered after luncheon in her room. "I begged
Madame to let me make it up _any_ other time, but of course she
wouldn't."
"Oh, well, we're not going to dress alike this time," said Sally May,
"so it doesn't matter. It _was_ fun, though, wasn't it, making
sailor-boy costumes out of sheets and pillowcases, and I never laughed
so hard in my life as when North House came in. You really ought to have
seen them"--this to Jane who had been away for the week-end--"not one of
them looked more than six months old--they pasted paper over their teeth
and had on the cutest little bonnets and long dresses and carried
bottles--really cold-cream bottles with a glove finger on top--"
"I think the Hindus were the cleverest," said Judith.
"The question before the house is, what are we going to do to-night?"
observed Josephine. "Now my idea"--
But what Josephine's idea was the rest never knew, for Rosamond put her
head in at the door and called, "Long distance 'phone for you, Jo; Miss
Martin says hurry"--
Judging by the speed with which Josephine vanished down the corridor she
was anxious to oblige Miss Martin.
The half-past two bell rang and Nancy and Judith went off to music
lessons without deciding anything about the costume for the party, and
when Judith came upstairs after an early dinner she was still as
undecided as ever. The corridor was as busy as the proverbial beehive,
for the "borrowing-rule" had been suspended for the day, and everybody
seemed to be making the most of the opportunity.
Judith was besieged with requests the moment she appeared.
"I bag your white slippers, Judy, if _you_ don't want them," called
Rosamond.
"And I want your black beads--"
"Your blue scarf, please, Judy," called Catherine from her room, "I'll
be awfully careful of it."
Squeals of delight came from the various rooms where tryings-on were
proceeding. "Every one seems happy but me," thought Judith dismally when
the borrowers had departed.
What would a Southern costume be like, anyway? Africa? No that would be
too hard and she hadn't the least idea how the Australians dressed.
South America? India? Was India south? No, it couldn't be, because she
had heard Audrey Green of East House describing a perfectly sweet Hindu
costume which her roommate was going to wear. Southerner? How stupid of
her! Why not a Virginian lady of the Colonial period? Why not? That's
settled. Now as to the how; whom could she ask? But no sympathetic
friend presented herself and Judith again began to feel aggrieved.
"Hurrah! hurrah!" cried Josephine excitedly rushing into the room.
"Jim--my brother--arrives to-night from Alberta and he'll call here
to-morrow first thing. I believe," she added in a lower, confidential
tone, "I believe I must have been a bit homesick and didn't know
it--there'll be letters and messages, and probably a box, too, from
home. Oh, I can hardly wait till to-morrow! Jim says Mother is all
right, though she misses me dreadfully--you see our nearest neighbour
lives fifty miles away, and sometimes she doesn't see a white woman all
winter."
"Fifty miles!" repeated Judith in amazement.
"Yes, we have to have a lot of land for the horses, and sometimes Dad is
away for several days visiting the outlying parts and Mother gets pretty
lonely."
"You're joking, Jo--your father couldn't spend several days travelling
on his own farm."
"Not farm, Judibus," said Josephine, laughing, "it's a ranch, and it has
to be big, as I said, for the horses."
"How big?" demanded Judith, still thinking of the farms she had seen in
Ontario and Quebec.
"We had twenty-five thousand acres last year, but Dad has leased another
ten thousand on the other side of the river. Oh, Judy, my dear, if ever
you come to the West I'll show you what real fun is! Sometimes I ride
all day--and such riding! I've a gem of a little mare--Patsy's her
name--she's as good a chum as I ever had until I came here last year.
Aren't mothers bricks?" she added with a little catch in her voice.
"Mother really needs me, but she just insisted on my coming--she taught
me in her spare time until I came here last year, and because spare time
wasn't plentiful there are big gaps in what I know, and as I'm stupid to
begin with, the lessons sometimes seem so hard that I just want to give
up and run home. But of course I'm not going to," she finished, laughing
at Judith's sober face; "that _would_ be a poor way to say 'thank you'
to my blessed little mother. What are you going to be to-night?"
"A Colonial lady from Virginia," answered Judith superbly.
"Good--isn't that funny? I'm going to be be a Virginian Colonel. Let's
be partners. Molly was to be mine, but she certainly can't go with a
sprained ankle. We'd better get busy--there isn't much time left." And
Josephine disappeared into her own cubicle where Judith could hear her
opening and closing drawers and singing in her funny boyish voice their
new nonsense song:
"Of all the ships that sail on land,
There's none like 'Jolly Susan.'
Her crew works well with heart and hand,
And sometimes they're amusin'."
Sally May and Jane whirled into the "Jolly Susan" like small hurricanes
in time to sing the verse over again, and then the snatches of talk she
could hear told Judith that her neighbours were thoroughly enjoying the
fascinating business of dressing up, and had evidently forgotten all
about her.
Perhaps it was a little reaction after several weeks of new and exciting
experiences; perhaps Josephine's reference to mothers being "bricks";
whatever it was Judith felt lonely and homesick. She didn't know how to
make her costume; she didn't think of Sally May, and she hated to
confess to Josephine--to whom, it must be confessed, she had always felt
a little superior--that she hadn't a ghost of a notion how to make, out
of nothing at all, the dress of a Virginian lady of fashion.
But although Josephine had convulsed the class and enraged Madame
Phillippe by translating _hors de combat_ as "war-horse," and although
her ideas as to angles and triangles were so hazy as to be of no service
to her in a geometry class, she was not at all stupid where her fellow
humans were concerned, and she had seen the quickly restrained quiver on
Judith's lips when mothers were mentioned.
"I guess she's homesick and doesn't know it," said Josephine to herself.
"I'd better buck her up a bit and give her a good time." But because she
had a generous admiration of Judith's cleverness she never thought of
offering her any suggestions as to how to put her costume together.
A little later she appeared in Judith's doorway in black tights, blue
silk stockings, buckled shoes (cardboard buckles covered with silver
paper), a white shirt blouse buttoned high, and a long black ribbon in
her hand.
"Please wind it round my neck, Judy, several times as high up as you
can. Why, where is your dress?" she asked in surprise.
Poor, proud Judith, how she hated to confess that she simply could not
think of anything. But the despised Josephine rose to the occasion: she
took charge with an assurance which immediately dispelled Judith's
gloom.
"Colonial lady--um--you will look awfully nice with your hair
powdered--let me see--your chintz curtains will do for panniers--put on
your frilliest blouse and a white skirt, pull down your curtains, and
I'll drape you in a minute or two."
Josephine was as good as her word. Blouse and skirt by means of an
overdrape of window curtain were made into the dress of a lady of
quality; Judith's pretty hair was piled high and liberally powdered with
talcum, and Josephine even produced a tiny bit of rouge and a black
patch, and insisted that to make the picture complete Judith must have
the buckled shoes, and as there wasn't time to make more buckles she'd
wear her old pumps.
Josephine was having such a good time admiring the result of her
handiwork that Judith accepted the shoes with a good grace, and off they
went to join the throng in the Big Hall. So successful had Josephine
been that Judith had quite a little triumph as she entered the hall on
her colonel's arm, for she had discarded the spectacles she wore during
school hours, and the powder and rouge had discovered a hitherto
unnoticed pair of beautiful arching eyebrows, and altogether her
appearance was so distinguished that numbers of girls turned to ask,
"Who's that pretty Virginian with Jo?"
It _was_ a thrilling evening. Indeed, it is to be doubted whether
bona-fide balls of later years would ever bring such thrills and such
intoxicating happiness to the Pierrots and Pierrettes, gypsies and
Arabs, Spanish dancers and flower girls, Elizabethan ladies and
cavaliers, Red Cross nurses and college dons, Indian chiefs and squaws,
cowboys and "habitant" girls, who were so thoroughly enjoying
themselves.
Judith laughed and danced away her blues, and to all the compliments
paid her was glad to be able to say with honest admiration, "Oh, _I_
couldn't do it--Josephine did--isn't she just _wonderful_?"
And when, after "the loveliest party ever," Judith tucked up in bed and
her thoughts ran to the absent mother, instead of tears she smiled
happily and whispered, "What a _lot_ of nice people there are in the
world, mummy, dear--I've got an awful lot to learn--but I'm going to try
_hard_ to be unselfish and kind like Josephine and Nancy."