“Hallo, Priscilla!” called a gay voice, and Beth turned to see Natalie’s eyes dancing at her from out the folds of the portière between her cousin’s dressing room and her own. “You can’t see me, but I can see you!” laughed Natalie. “You’re not to see me until the great day--you dear little Priscilla! You’re too sweet to be real. Bethie, I’d come and hug you and find out if you were real, only I can’t without showing you my gown.” “I’m real,” said Beth. “I look like a picture in the glass, but pictures can’t curtsey, Natalie. Look!” She took her soft gown on each side between a thumb and forefinger and curtsied solemnly and low. Her face was all rosy pink and her eyes shining with delight. “If only Aunt Rebecca could see me!” she sighed. “She loves our Puritan ancestors so, and she’d never believe how I look.” “She shall see you!” cried Aunt Alida. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Bethie. We’ll have a miniature of you painted on ivory, just as you look this moment, and we’ll send it to your Aunt Rebecca for Christmas! No photograph could do justice to those soft tints.” “Painted? Of me?” gasped Beth. “Aunt Rebecca has a miniature; she says it’s her grandfather Bowen’s second wife; she was a Southerner. It’s perfectly lovely. Aunt Alida, I’ll have to stop talking to you, because I can’t say new things when you do new things! Only I’m most sure Aunt Rebecca will say it’s ministering to my vanity to have my picture painted; she always was afraid Miss Tappan would make me vain if she trimmed my dresses much--she always told her not to minister to my vanity. But Miss Tappan doesn’t know how to make people look fine enough to be really vain--you do, Aunt Alida! Still, I don’t feel spoiled; I just feel--happy!” Once more Aunt Alida kissed Beth, and the little girl felt sure that the dressmaker’s woman gave her hair a slight caress as she took off the lovable Puritan gown to which Beth had lost her heart completely. On the great night of what Beth liked to call in her thoughts “her first ball,” Thanksgiving night, Beth stood before the mirror in her beautiful blue room while Frieda fastened the silvery blue gown that fell to Beth’s slippered feet, and laid over her shoulders the soft white fichu, and fastened on her flowing hair the tiny lace cap that added the last touch and turned Beth into something between her own ancestress and a great doll. “Oh, oh, oh!” gasped Beth. “I don’t see how they ever let the Puritans leave England if they wore such things! Isn’t it the dearest, be-eau-ti-fulest gown, Frieda? Come in,” she added in reply to a knock, and Anna Mary presented herself in the doorway.