‘Why, a room ought to be as becoming as a dress—so Mrs. Pinkerton says. You know I saw a great deal of her at the hotel; and oh, girls! her bedroom was the most exquisite thing you ever saw! She had a French toilet-table, covered with pale blue silk and white marquise lace,—perfectly lovely,—with yards and yards of robin’s-egg blue watered ribbon in bows; and on it she kept all her toilet articles, everything in hammered silver from Tiffany’s with monograms on the back,—three or four sizes of brushes, and combs, and mirrors, and a full manicure set. It used to take her two hours to dress; but it was worth it. Oh, such gorgeous tea-gowns as she had! One of old rose and lettuce was a perfect dream! She always had her breakfast in bed, you know. I think it’s delightful to have your breakfast before you get up, and dress as slowly as you like. I wish mamma would let me do it.’ ‘What does she do after she gets dressed in her rows of old lettuce—I mean her old rows of lettuce?’ asked Polly. ‘Do? Why really, Polly, you are too stupid! What do you suppose she did? What everybody else does, of course.’ ‘Oh!’ said Polly, apologetically. ‘How old is Mrs. Pinkerton?’ asked Margery. ‘Between nineteen and twenty. There is not three years’ difference in our ages, though she has been married nearly two years. It seems so funny.’ ‘Only nineteen!’ cried Bell. ‘Why, I always thought that she was old as the hills—twenty-five or thirty at the very least. She always seemed tired of things.’ ‘Well,’ said Laura, in a whisper intended to be too low to reach Mrs. Winship’s tent, ‘I don’t know whether I ought to repeat what was told me in confidence, but the fact is—well—she doesn’t like Mr. Pinkerton very well!’ The other girls, who had not enjoyed the advantages of city life and travel, looked as dazed as any scandalmonger could have desired. ‘Don’t like him!’ gasped Polly, nearly falling off the stump. ‘Why, she’s married to him!’ ‘Where on earth were you brought up?’ snapped Laura. ‘What difference does that make? She can’t help it if she doesn’t happen to like her husband, can she? You can’t make yourself like anybody, can you?’ ‘Well, did she ever like him?’ asked Margery; ‘for she’s only been married a year or two, and it seems to me it might have lasted that long if there was anything to begin on.’ ‘But,’ whispered Laura, mysteriously, ‘you see Mr. Pinkerton was very rich and the Dentons very poor. Mr. Denton had just died, leaving them nothing at all to live on, and poor Jessie would have had to teach school, or some dreadful thing like that. The thought of it almost killed her, she is so sensitive and so refined. She never told me so in so many words, but I am sure she married Mr. Pinkerton to save her mother from poverty; and I pity her from the bottom of my heart.’ ‘I suppose it was noble,’ said Bell, in a puzzled tone, ‘if she couldn’t think of any other way, but—’