But as the day wore on the girls brightened up, and Alice and the governess made some bouquets for the dinner table, and put one in Godfrey’s room, but none in those of the bride. Flowers were not for her, a woman of forty with a squint and a limp and glasses! So they only opened the windows of her rooms and let in the soft air of early September, and Emma cried a little as she looked across the lawn to where her mother slept, and wondered if she knew, or knowing, cared that another was in her place. And then she went to her Aunt Christine and told her it was time to dress, and asked if she was coming down. Miss Rossiter had the headache and lay upon the couch, and said she must be excused. She could not meet the woman that night; she must wait till morning, when she hoped to be stronger and better able to bear it. So Emma dropped the shades and brought the camphor to her aunt and smoothed her hair a moment, and almost wished she, too, had the headache, and then went to Alice and Julia, who were dressing, and who gave her a meaning look as she entered. “What, _black_ this warm day?” Emma exclaimed, as she saw Julia had chosen a plain black grenadine, which, with the simple white band about her neck, gave her the look of one in mourning. “Yes, black,” Julia replied. “I do not feel like decking myself as for a festival. This is no holiday to us, and Kitty has brought out your plain grenadine for you.” “And I am horrid in black,” Emma said, plaintively; but she usually submitted to the stronger will of her sister, and so she donned the black dress which made her look so like a nun that, braving Julia’s displeasure, she ventured to tie a bit of lavender ribbon in her hair, and was delighted at the effect. “Look, isn’t it becoming?” she said. “Surely half-mourning is admissible on the occasion of the new mother’s advent.” Even Julia admitted that the effect was good, and as she was herself an ardent lover of dress and had adopted her plain garb more from resentment to the living than respect for the dead, she too tried the effect of lavender, and fastened at her throat a pretty bow of ribbon, which brightened her up wonderfully. Alice, who had nothing to resent, and who wished to be as attractive as possible to Godfrey after his long absence, indulged her taste to its fullest extent, and succeeded in getting her hair higher than she had ever gotten it before. Godfrey was of course accustomed to the very latest styles of Parisian hair-dressing, and she did not wish to appear singular to him, she said, when Emma exclaimed: “Why, Alice, how funny you do look!”