ch a dainty pretty Dot, in her
new blue muslin dress that _almost_ reached to the ground, and fitted
closely to her slender little figure, and a new white straw hat with a
new white gossamer floating out behind waiting to be tied when the
kisses were all given and taken.

The girl's face was like a tender blush rose; her eyes were shining with
actual excitement (rare thing in placid Dot), and her hair hung down her
back in a thick plait tied with blue ribbon.

It was the plait which caught Betty's attention.

"Oh!" she cried in disappointment, and then stopped, remembering the
silence that had been imposed upon her.

Dot ran to her and kissed her.

"It's all right," she said. "You may talk to me. I asked mother, and she
says _yes_ until I go."

"I can't when you're gone," said Betty; but she brightened up very much.

And she thought it very kind of Dot to have asked her mother to break
the rule of silence, if it were only for an hour.

"I thought you were going to wear your hair on the top of your head,"
she said, surveying Dot's plait somewhat contemptuously.

"Mother won't let me," said Dot; "she says sixteen's too young."

"Why sixteen is _old_," said Betty, "and you've left school."

"I know. And mother was married at sixteen. But she says she wants me to
keep my girlhood a little longer than she kept hers."

"Hem," said Betty.

"_I_ don't want to," said Dot, and added virtuously, "but we can't do
just as we like even with our own hair."

"_I_ shall," said Betty, and gave her morsel of a plait a convincing
pull. "Wasn't my hair as long as yours once; and didn't I cut it off
because I wanted to?"

Then Dot bethought her of the wisdom of sixteen, and the foolishness of
twelve and a bit, and she slipped her arm as lovingly around her little
sister as she was wont to do around any of her friends at Westmead
House.

"Dear little Betty," she said, "promise me, you poor little thing, to be
good all the time I am away."

But Betty, unused to caresses, slipped away.

"You always are away," she said. "I'll be as good as I want to. I wonder
how good you'd be if suddenly you had to stay at home and wash up and
dust."

The picture was quite unenticing to Dot. _Wash up and dust and stay at
home!_ She moved slowly to the door, feeling very sorry for Betty.

"I must go now," she said. "All this is just a finish up to my school
time. Afterwards I shall have to stay at home and be eldest daughter
while you h