"Yes, indeed, Lola; and I've a good mind to let Miss Myrick make up my olive-green after New-Year's. I really think that if I take as much pains as you do, and go there twice a day to show her, she will be able to fit me splendidly. Don't you think so?" Lola gave her sister a curious look while she spoke, her face flushed, and after a disturbed expression had flitted over it the hardly banished frown seemed ready to come back. "I don't know what Miss Myrick would want with you twice a day; I don't go there twice a day, I'm sure." "Oh, I was only thinking--well, you _are_ the strangest girl." Miss Matilda would have been offended, probably, had her sister given her time; but Lola's hands were already gliding over her hair, removing hair-pins, switches, and other appendages from the elder young lady's head. "Let me show you how I mean to dress your hair on New-Year's eve," said Lola, and peace was made. To have her hair done up by Lola was always an object worth attaining--no one else could make Miss Matilda's angular head appear so well-shaped as she. Miss Fanny meanwhile had picked up a book and thrown herself on the lounge to read, but combs and combing material having been brought in from an adjoining room she soon became interested in the braids and twists with which her sister's head was being adorned. During the progress of the work, she, as well as the mother, threw in suggestions, or made criticisms with a freedom which sometimes caused the short upper lip of the fair hair-dresser to be drawn up until the milk-white teeth shone out from under it, though she responded with the utmost amiability to the hints thrown out and the advice so lavishly given. The mother had never allowed an opportunity like this to pass without "improving her daughters' disposition," as she termed it--striving honestly so to do by trying the somewhat quick temper of the impulsive, affectionate child. Because the girl's eyes flashed fire and her lips curled haughtily when any fancied slight was put upon her, as she thought her shy but loving advances were repulsed, the family had come to look upon the youngest born as having a bad disposition, when really a more amiable child than little Lola had never grown into womanhood. "She's an odd one, and always has been ever since they gave her that outlandish name," the father would say, stroking his slender stock of reddish-white hair from his forehead till it stood straight up like a sentinel guarding the bald pate just back of it; "she don't look like the rest, and don't act like 'em, either, though I spent more money on her education than both her sisters put together ever cost me."