ss went rather in creases. It looked too loose. I went all round her,
ever so many times, peeping at it, though she didn't know, of course. I
can tell when a dress fits, as well as anybody, because of helping to
dress mums so often. Sometimes, for a change from the town-crier, mums
calls me a man-milliner. I don't mind.

Judith's dress was all right. It was of silk, a soft kind, not near so
liney as satin. I like it better. They were both very neat. No pins or
hair-pins sticking out.

But mums looked prettiest. I can tell you how she was dressed, because
she's not been at a Drawing-room since, for last spring and summer she
got a cold or something both times she meant to go. By rights she should
go every year, because of what father is. I hope she'll go next spring,
for after that I shall be at school, and never able to see her, and I do
love to look at her all grand like that. She says she doesn't know how
she'll do without me for seeing she's all right.

Well, her dress was blue and pale pink, the train blue--a flowery
pattern--and she had blue and pink bunches of feathers all sticking
about it; no flowers except her nosegay, which was blushing roses tied
with blue streamers.

She did look nice.

Her hair looked grander than usual, because of something she had never
had in it before, and that was a beautiful diamond twisty-twirly thing.
I have never seen a diamond brooch or pin quite like it, though I often
look in the jewellers' windows.

She was very proud of it, though she'd only got the loan of it. I must
go back a bit to tell you how she had got it.

A day or two before grandfather left, mums told him about the
Drawing-room. If she had known he was going to be with us then, she
wouldn't have fixed to go to it; for, as I have said, he takes up nearly
all her time, especially when he's only there for a short visit. I
suppose I shouldn't call it a visit, as it's his own house, but it seems
the best word. And for her to be a whole day out, not in at luncheon,
and a train-show at afternoon tea-time, would have been just what he
doesn't like. But it couldn't be helped now, as others were counting on
her, especially Mrs. Chasserton, our cousin's wife--that's Dorothea.

We were there--Anne, Hebe, and I--when mother told gran about it. We
really felt rather frightened, but she said it so sweetly, I felt sure
he _couldn't_ be vexed. And he wasn't. He did frudge up his
eyebrows--'frudge' is a word we've made oursel