Family -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Juvenile fiction
"Well, I have to you know. Besides I get a letter every day. Joe said
yesterday that your folks had taken the Baldwin house."
"Father said in his letter he expected to. But do you know, Doro, I
would never advise a poor girl to go out of her own territory, I think
I shall be unhappy now--at home."
"Nonsense. You will enjoy the simple life more thoroughly than ever.
That is only a scruple, you are afraid you shouldn't enjoy anything but
Dalton. You know perfectly well you would rather dig
Jacks-in-the-pulpit out by our back wall, than snatch those
honeysuckles at your window."
"Perhaps," said Tavia vaguely. "But I guess you are right, Doro. You
always are. I am just afraid to think of anything but what we've got."
"Not even the five hundred?"
"Oh, that is what upsets me. I shall expect it to make us millionaires."
"And so it will in happiness. I can't blame you one bit for wanting to
get home to talk it over."
"Oh, that was yesterday. To-day I want to go to camp."
Dorothy looked at her uneasily. She remembered it was told her once
that sudden changes were always unwholesome to young people.
"It must be that," she told herself, "Tavia has had too many sudden
changes lately. And she always was so sentimental. I believe, after
all, it is best for girls to keep busy at practical things. Tavia has
never been trained."
"Now," said Tavia, who had been fixing before the pretty dressing
table, "I'm ready. But I have a plan--to help Nat out with Rosabel's
complexion test."
"Oh, he was only joking," exclaimed Dorothy. "He wouldn't be so rude."
"It's no harm, I'm sure; I've done it lots of times. Come out and I'll
show you."
Out on the lawn Tavia ran about like the girl she used to be. She was
looking for something. Down behind the hedge of Cedars then out on the
open fields patches of clover and daisies were tangled--they grew
outside the Cedars; beyond the line.
"Here it is!" she called to Dorothy. "Such a lovely bunch."
Then running back she brought to Dorothy a long stem of mullen leaves.
"What are they for?" asked Dorothy, for she knew the common plant well
enough.
"To paint our cheeks with, and it doesn't come off! Won't Rosabel be
surprised."
"But I wouldn't think of putting those sticky leaves to my face,"
objected Dorothy.
"Why, they're not poison," said Tavia, beginning to unfold the velvet
leaves that look so soft and are really so very "scratchy."
"Don't!" begged Dorothy. "It is just as bad as paint, and paint is
positively vulgar. I am sure you were mistaken about Rosabel. No
respectable girl would be so foolish."
But Tavia was rubbing the leaves to her pink cheeks with absolute
disregard of everything but "rubbing." That seemed to be the one thing
necessary in the operation.
Presently a deep red stained her cheeks. She felt the sting but wanted
to make sure it was all rubbed on.
"Does it burn?" asked Dorothy in surprise that Tavia should really
carry out her threat to make her cheeks redder than Rosabel's.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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