A few days later, and when nearly all the preparations for the White Mountain trip were finished, Clara expressed a desire to run home to Oakdale for three or four days. It was a lovely morning in the last days of June, and the scene was at the breakfast-table. Ella floated languidly in at the last moment, in a lovely morning-dress of white lawn, puffed and flounced, and with wide flowing sleeves that exposed well her pretty arms. At her breast she wore a knot of narrow blue ribbons and a little bouquet of fresh rosebuds. Her hair, which curled naturally, she had brushed out and passed her fingers through and through it, until it lay in innumerable fluffy ringlets and curls kept back from her face by a wide blue ribbon, fringed at the ends and tied in an elegant bow at the top of her head. “How pretty she is!” said the eyes of Albert. Ella seated herself in her place languidly, as if life were the very burden she pretended it was. “How pretty you look, Ella!” said Clara, generously. “It does not seem as if you could ever grow old.” “Like you, for example,” said Albert, smiling. “I know I am young enough,” replied Clara, “but I do not think I ever looked as fresh as Ella does.” “I am sure I would exchange all the freshness that you seem to admire so much,” said Ella, “for a nose as elegant as yours.” “Yes, I believe my nose is irreproachable,” replied Clara, smiling; “but as a child, it was certainly a pug.” “Like mine.” “No, yours is not that by any means. I think you should be quite satisfied with your person.”