It was a dark afternoon outside and in. Sallie and the Lakeville girls were darning stockings in Henrietta’s room and the light was really too poor for so gloomy an occupation. They were glad when Maude dropped in, swept the stockings from the table and seated herself thereon. A few moments later Cora and little Jane Pool strolled in, followed shortly by Debbie Clark.
“Come on in, girls,” said Maude. “‘Nous avons les raisins blancs et noirs mais pas de cerises.’ In other words, there are no chairs but help yourselves to the floor. You’re just in time. Here’s Mabel cross as two sticks, Marjory terribly doleful for some unknown reason and Henrietta sulking every day at mail time and for hours afterwards. Such a grouchy bunch! What shall I do to cheer you up?”
“It is rather dark just now,” admitted Jean, “but you know we’re all going to the ice cream festival in the basement of the Baptist church tonight. That ought to cheer most anybody.”
“Except Augusta Lemon,” said Cora.
“Why?” asked Henrietta. “Because we have to go early and get away from there before the Theologs arrive on the scene at eight thirty?”
“No, but she’s torn a great jagged hole in the front of her best dress and spilled ink on her second best frock. Since she’s been going with Gladys, she feels as if she had to be dressy.”
“We ought to help her out,” said kind-hearted Jean.
“So we ought,” said Maude, a wicked light beginning to dance in her golden brown eyes. “I have a beautiful idea. I think we ought to help her out a whole lot.”
“How?” asked Marjory.
“Well, you know what a goose she is—how easy it is to make her do what you want her to do—”
“Yes,” said Cora, “she hasn’t any backbone.”
“Not a particle,” agreed Sallie.
“Well, then, I’ll persuade her to let me dress her up for tonight. Let’s borrow the very gayest things we can find. Let’s see how far we can go. Let’s make her look perfectly awful.”
“Oh, no,” pleaded Jean.
“Now be good, Jean, and don’t spoil our fun,” begged Maude. “We just want to cheer these gloomy children up. I know Augusta will be a cheerful sight when we get her all dolled up.”
“I’ll do her hair,” laughed Cora. “I’ll curl it.”
“You couldn’t,” declared Marjory. “It’s the straightest hair that ever grew.”
“I’ll try, anyway. But where are the gay clothes coming from?”
“There’s that fearful sport skirt of Hazel Benton’s,” suggested Sallie. “The one with the very wide green and white stripes. You might borrow that, Maude.”
“And my bright pink sweater,” offered Debbie Clark.
“Dorothy Miller has a pair of awfully pink silk stockings,” said little Jane Pool. “And Augusta herself has a pair of those silly high heeled pumps like Gladys’s. Wouldn’t it be fun to put pink bows on them!”
“Ruth Dennis has some on her lamp shade,” offered Sallie. “And her curtains are tied back with pink ribbons. They’d do for her hair.”
“Good,” laughed Maude. “Now there ought to be a blouse—who has the gayest one?”
“Isabelle has,” said Mabel. “That robin’s egg blue one.”
“Good,” said Maude. “Now I’ll go and gather in all those duds and dump them in here. And then Cora and I will call on Augusta. After we get her talked over, you can help dress her, Henrietta. The rest of you giggle too easily—you’d give the show away. But you can peek in one at a time through the transom if you’re very careful.”
“I can provide a gorgeous string of bright red beads,” offered Henrietta. “And I know where I can get a pair of earrings. She’ll be a perfect scream.”
Augusta was not at all a pretty girl. She had a large, rather stupid face (Henrietta said she looked like a sheep) a meager amount of very stiff and very straight taffy colored hair, her complexion was pale and pasty and her figure was bad; mostly because she was not careful to stand nicely. She proved as easily led as Maude had predicted. She accepted the girls’ offer of assistance with alacrity.
“You’d be lovely with curls,” persuaded Cora, wickedly. “I happen to have a curling iron and an alcohol lamp in my pocket right now. I was just carrying them around—well, just carrying them around, you know. Matches too. Well now, we’ll just light up the little lamp—like that—and we’ll try a little curl—like this. Sit still so I won’t burn your ears—they stick out a good deal so I have to be careful. Here’s Henrietta—she’ll tell us a lovely story while I curl. You’re going to be so beautiful that nobody will know which is you and which is the ice cream.”
“Here’s this adorable skirt,” said Maude, returning with a gay armful of garments. “But you ought to have a bath.”
“I had one last night,” said Augusta.
“Then I’ll dress your feet,” said Henrietta, grabbing the pink silk stockings and flopping down on the floor.
“But they’re pink,” objected Augusta,
“They are Dorothy Miller’s very newest ones,” persuaded Maude, not disclosing the fact that a color-blind aunt had given them to Dorothy for Christmas. “She got them because—because her aunt read in ‘The Well Dressed Woman’ that pink silk stockings should always be worn to ice cream festivals.”
“Did she really?” demanded round-eyed Augusta.
“Pink and green,” declared Maude, hastily holding up the starched skirt to hide her own smiling countenance, “are complementary colors, Mrs. Henry says. You wear them together. The pink brings out the green and the green brings out the pink. And robin’s egg blue—that’s your soul color, Augusta.”
“It doesn’t match the skirt,” objected Augusta.
“It matches your eyes,” said Maude. “Oh, Henrietta! Her feet are beautiful! Yes, I like the bows on her pumps.”
“Ouch!” gasped Augusta, “you did burn my ear.”
“I’ll be more careful,” promised Cora, whose shoulders were shaking. “Just two more lovely curls and I’ll be done—you never saw such adorable curls. Much nicer than Gladys’s.”
“Now the pink sweater,” said Henrietta.
Suddenly there was a crash outside the door, a sound of giggling and of swift scurrying. It was Mabel’s turn at the transom; and the chair had tipped over. Her friends hustled her across the hall along with the chair and examined them both. There were bruises but nothing broken.
“What was that?” gasped Augusta. “Something hit my door.”
“Nothing there,” said Cora, peering into the hall. “The corridor’s perfectly empty. It was probably Miss Woodruff rising from her nap.”
“Wouldn’t it be better,” suggested Maude, thoughtfully eying gorgeous Augusta, “if she were to wear her everyday dress over these things when she goes down to dinner!”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Henrietta. “I’ll tell you what, Augusta. Let’s keep this a lovely surprise for the girls tonight. Not the curls. We’ll just slick those down a bit with a wide black ribbon. But we’ll pull some black stockings over the pink ones and cover your skirt and blouse. The first minute after dinner we’ll rush right up and peel you and put on the pink bows and beads and things. This is just sort of a dress rehearsal.”
“The Highland Hall girls simply won’t know you when they see you at the festival,” assured Maude, when Augusta had agreed to keep the secret until her arrival at the church parlors. Poor Augusta was not accustomed to so much attention from Maude, Henrietta and Cora, all of whom she had admired from a distance, and it pleased her. And, in their hilarious state over the success of their joke, the three naughty girls failed to realize that in making a laughing stock of poor silly Augusta they were not playing fair.
It is true that they suffered a few twinges during dinner time when pleased Augusta beamed at them with a new friendliness and insisted on dividing her dessert among them; but when the proper time came, they peeled her remorselessly, bedecked her with the ridiculous pink bows and smuggled her into the procession without giving the secret away.
The girls not in the secret were surprised; but after all, it was the plotters themselves who were the most completely astonished.
Augusta in all her pinkness—not to mention her blueness and greenness—was a conspicuous object; she was visible from any place in the big room. Now, the Theological students were not to arrive until much later; but the younger boys from Hiltonburg were there in full force. There was an expectant flutter among the Highland Hall girls. On a similar occasion, introduced by some of the day pupils, these same boys had treated several of them to ice cream. Perhaps they’d do it now. Extra ice cream would be very welcome for they had all spent their weekly pocket money and Doctor Rhodes felt that he was sufficiently generous when he provided one helping apiece for his large flock.
But now, with one accord, all the boys at the festival, attracted by Augusta’s brilliant attire and not yet of an age to be critical, were seized with a yearning to treat gorgeous Augusta to ice cream. They begged to be introduced. They begged to be allowed to offer Augusta ice cream and yet more ice cream. And cake and yet more cake.
The wondering girls, staring at blushing Augusta, were amazed to see that she was actually pretty, in spite of her outrageous clothes, for her curled hair fell tenderly and becomingly about her glowing face, her eyes were like stars and she fairly radiated happiness as she ate dish after dish of ice cream. There seemed to be no limit to her capacity.
“And here we are,” breathed Henrietta, “sitting in a long row like so many sheep—”
“And only one dish apiece,” groaned Maude. “Next time I’ll pin all the pink bows on myself.”