'She has a very loving
heart, and is easily led. How pretty the girls look, and how
different they are! Polly is like a thistledown or a firefly,
Margery like one of our home Mayflowers, and I can't help thinking my
Bell like a sunbeam.'
The girls did look very pretty; for their mothers had fashioned their
camping-dresses with much care and taste, taking great pains to make
them picturesque and appropriate to their summer life 'under the
greenwood tree.'
Over a plain full skirt of heavy crimson serge Bell wore a hunting
jacket and drapery of dark leaf-green, like a bit of forest against a
sunset. Her hair, which fell in a waving mass of burnished
brightness to her waist, was caught by a silver arrow, and crowned by
a wide soft hat of crimson felt encircled with a bird's breast.
Margery wore a soft grey flannel, the colour of a dove's throat,
adorned with rows upon rows of silver braid and sparkling silver
buttons; while her big grey hat had nothing but a silver cord and
tassel tied round it in Spanish fashion.
Polly was all in sailor blue, with a distractingly natty little
double-breasted coat and great white rolling collar. Her hat swung
in her hand, as usual, showing her boyish head of sunny auburn curls,
and she carried on a neat chatelaine a silver cup and little clasp-
knife, as was the custom in the party.
'It's very difficult,' Polly often exclaimed, 'to get a dress that
will tone down your hair and a hat that will tone up your nose, when
the first is red and the last a snub! My nose is the root of all
evil; it makes people think I'm saucy before I say a word; and as for
my hair, they think I must be peppery, no matter if I were really as
meek as Moses.
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