e wig around, and examined it curiously. "What they
all must have looked like!" she said. "This is a judge's wig, I think."

"Then it can fit none but you, Senorita Perfecta!" cried Rita; but the
sting was gone from her tone, and she had wholly forgotten her moment of
spite. "Here! here is mine. Behold me, a gallant of the court! I
advance, I bow--but my cloak, where is my cloak? Quick, Marguerite, the
key of the other chest!"

The other chest, a great black one, studded with brass nails, contained,
as Mrs. Cheriton had said, any amount of material for the delightful
pastime of dressing up. The gauzes were crumpled, to be sure, the gold
lace tarnished, and the satins and brocades more or less spotted and
decayed; but what of that? The splendours of the Family Chest were too
solemn to sport with; here was material for hours and days of joy. Rita
was soon arrayed in a scarlet military coat, a habit skirt of dark
velvet, and a plumed hat which perched like a bird on top of her flowing
wig. Peggy was put into a charming Watteau costume of flowered silk, in
which she looked so pretty that Rita declared it was a shame for her
ever to wear anything else; while Margaret found a long, gold-spotted
gauze that took her fancy mightily. Thus attired, the three girls
frisked and danced about the huge, dim old garret, astonishing the
spiders, and sending the mice scuttling into their holes in terror. The
seventeen years that sometimes weighed heavily on Margaret's slender
shoulders, and that sat like a flame of pride on Rita's white forehead,
seemed utterly forgotten; these were three merry children that ran to
and fro, waking the echoes to mirth. Rita proposed a dance, and cried
out in horror when Peggy confessed that she could not dance at all, and
Margaret that she had had few lessons and no experience.

[Illustration: IN THE GARRET.]

"Poor victims!" cried the Cuban. "Slaves of Northern prejudice! I will
teach you, my poors! Not to dance, not to understand the management of a
fan--how are you to go through life, without equipment, I ask you?"

She held out her arms with a gesture so tragic that Margaret could not
help laughing.

"Rita, forgive me!" she said. "I was trying to fancy my poor dear
father giving me a lesson in the management of a fan. He was really my
chief teacher, you know."

"Yes, and who was there for me to dance with?" cried Peggy, holding out
her gay flounces. "Brother Jim would be rather like a grizzly be