"I just went down town the minute I got to Centerville and got some nice strong muslin and I've been making it up perfectly plain except for a tiny edge. They are heaps more comfortable--and I wear these others for best. Why, I couldn't keep a maid and hurl all that stuff at her every week!" "Are they wearing hoops pretty generally?" Mrs. Morton inquired as Alice laughingly held a pair up for inspection. "Yes, and bustles too. See this buff poplin with the panniers just has to have a bustle. Thank goodness they're young yet, as Dick says, but I suppose they'll keep on getting bigger." "Oh, I should think they'd be so hot and horrid." "They are, but the hoops are delightfully cool, only you have to be on your guard with the treacherous things or they swing up in front when you sit down, in a most mortifying fashion." "I have a pair to wear with my muslin dresses--it makes them stand out beautifully," said Katy complacently. "But Mother wouldn't let Gertie have any. She said she was too young." "I didn't want the old things," Gertie protested. "And you wouldn't have got yours if you hadn't teased perfectly awful, and I heard Mother say she guessed you'd soon be sick enough of them." "I agree entirely with your mother, Gertie, I consider them unsuitable for little girls. But they do set off a handsome dress to advantage. I remember during the war we used to wear such large ones we could hardly get through a door with them." "Mother Morton, I bet you were a lot more frivolous than we are now." Marian put her hand lovingly on the wrinkled one that was smoothing the folds of a rich silk. Mrs. Morton smiled. "Well, we had our pretty things. Alice's dresses are lovely, but she hasn't anything more elegant than my second day dress. It was a brown and silver silk brocade with thread lace chemisette and under sleeves. And my next best was apple green and pink changeable, trimmed in yards and yards of narrow black velvet ribbon all sewed on by hand." "How I should love to have seen them!" Alice smiled wistfully. "You know I didn't have any of my mother's things." "Come on, girls, it's getting late, let's help Alice put her treasures away. They couldn't be nicer, Alice, and I think you are going to be a very happy woman to make up for that desolate girlhood of yours." Marian was already folding the garments. They were soon laid away snugly in trunk and closet and drawers, and the whole family packed off to bed to be ready for the early farm breakfast on the morrow. CHAPTER VI A HUNTING PARTY The day following the arrival of the guests was spent in resting and seeing the ranch. Katy and Gertie had never been on a large farm before, and the thousand acres of field and prairie and woodland, seemed as marvellous as the tales they had read of the big English estates. Alice and Dick were also fascinated by all this space and freedom, but they saw deeper than the little girls.