tant things," said Judith.

CHAPTER III

DRESSING UP

"GOT your costume ready for to-night, Judy?" asked Nancy one glorious
sunshiny morning a few weeks later.

"I have _not_," came from Judith in dismayed tones; "I absolutely forgot
about it. Why didn't you remind me? I haven't heard any one mention it
all week."

"Well, there hasn't really been time to do anything, has there? And,
anyway, we usually concoct something at the last minute. I do love
dressing up, don't you?"

"I do if I don't have to make up the dress," said Judith honestly, as
she finished making her bed and leaned out of the window to take deep
breaths of the glorious October air. "Nancy, do come and look at the
maple grove, and the oaks and the beeches against that lovely sky, and
isn't the vine on Miss Meredith's house simply a gorgeous colour? I
could almost eat the sunshine, it's so good. Tell me what to wear
to-night. I don't know what I should have done without your help last
Friday."

"Let's think it over," said Nancy, pulling on a sweater and cap and
running off to play tennis with Jane; "see you at recess and we'll
decide then."

But when recess came Judith confessed to not having given it a thought,
she had been kept too busy for the consideration of such frivolities as
a Friday party, and Nancy on her part had a doleful tale of returned
lessons to be made up during the afternoon.

"Oh, _why_ didn't I prepare that French prose?" she wailed when the crew
of the "Jolly Susan" foregathered after luncheon in her room. "I begged
Madame to let me make it up _any_ other time, but of course she
wouldn't."

"Oh, well, we're not going to dress alike this time," said Sally May,
"so it doesn't matter. It _was_ fun, though, wasn't it, making
sailor-boy costumes out of sheets and pillowcases, and I never laughed
so hard in my life as when North House came in. You really ought to have
seen them"--this to Jane who had been away for the week-end--"not one of
them looked more than six months old--they pasted paper over their teeth
and had on the cutest little bonnets and long dresses and carried
bottles--really cold-cream bottles with a glove finger on top--"

"I think the Hindus were the cleverest," said Judith.

"The question before the house is, what are we going to do to-night?"
observed Josephine. "Now my idea"--

But what Josephine's idea was the rest never knew, for Rosamond put her
head in at the door and called, "Long distance