Tabitha was to recite a long selection all by herself, and she had taken great pride in learning it with appropriate gestures, conscious of the fact that she was the best speaker in the room, and happy in the teacher's unstinted praise and her playmates' envious admiration. But now! Miss Brooks had asked the girls to wear white dresses, and Tabitha had none! What a calamity! She had expected to wear her new green gingham. It wasn't a very pretty color, to be sure, or very becoming, but she had coaxed Aunt Maria to make it after the fashion of Carrie's dainty dresses and was delighted with the result. Now the rest of the girls would be in white, and it would look dreadful to have one green dress in the splendid array on the platform. What could she do? It was useless to ask for a white gown, and even if there were any possibility of getting the new material it was too late to make it up in time for the exhibition, for Aunt Maria wasn't a great success as a seamstress, and it took her a long time to make a dress. Why, she had worked more than a week on the green gingham, and that was just tucked! If there could be a white dress it would have to have ruffles on it; all the other girls' white dresses had ruffles on them somewhere. Carrie's had two ruffles on the skirt, and Mamie Cole's had _three_. Bertha Dean's had only one ruffle around the shoulders and the skirt was tucked, but it was very pretty; and if Tabitha could not have ruffles on the skirt, she would want at least a shoulder ruffle with lace around it. Well, there was no use in planning, she could not have a white dress. But how could she face all those people in a green gingham and be the only odd girl there? "Tabitha Catt!" The voice was sharp and insistent, and at the sound of the hateful name almost forgotten now, the child came suddenly out of her unhappy reverie. "What is it, Aunt Maria?" "Where in the world have you been? I've called you half a dozen times already. Go to my trunk and bring me that box of odd pieces just under the tray. I want to mend this dress before dark. Mind you are careful now. The tray is broken; lift it carefully."