Hazel Ripwinkley put on her nankeen sack and skirt, and her little
round, brown straw hat. For May had come, and almost gone, and it
was a day of early summer warmth.
Hazel's dress was not a "suit;" it had been made and worn two
summers before suits were thought of; yet it suited very well, as
people's things are apt to do, after all, who do not trouble
themselves about minutiæ of fashion, and so get no particular
antediluvian marks upon them that show when the flood subsides.
Her mother knew some things that Hazel did not. Mrs. Ripwinkley, if
she had been asleep for five and twenty years, had lost none of her
perceptive faculties in the trance. But she did not hamper her child
with any doubts; she let her go on her simple way, under the shield
of her simplicity, to test this world that she had come into, for
herself.
Hazel had written down her little list of the girls' names that she
would like to ask; and Mrs. Ripwinkley looked at it with a smile.
There was Ada Geoffrey, the banker's daughter, and Lilian Ashburne,
the professor's,--heiresses each, of double lines of birth and
wealth. She could remember how, in her childhood, the old names
sounded, with the respect that was in men's tones when they were
spoken; and underneath were Lois James and Katie Kilburnie, children
of a printer and a hatter. They had all been chosen for their purely
personal qualities. A child, let alone, chooses as an angel chooses.
It remained to be seen how they would come together.