a had a
blue mark under her chin from the green ribbon.

"Mother was in her room, in her white dimity morning gown, with
little bows up the front, the ends trimmed with cambric edging. She
took off our hats and our pelisses,--the tight little sleeves came
off wrong side out,--sponged our faces with cool water, and brushed
out Laura's curls. That was the only difference between us. I
hadn't any curls, and my hair had to be kept cropped. Then she went
to her upper bureau drawer and took out two little paper boxes.

"'Something has come for Blanche and Clorinda, since you have been
gone,' she said, smiling. 'I suppose you have been shopping?' We
took the paper boxes, laughing back at her with a happy
understanding. We were used to these little plays of mother's, and
she couldn't really surprise us with her kindnesses. We went and sat
down in the window-seat, and opened them as deliberately and in as
grown-up a way as we could. Inside them were two little lace
pelerines lined with rose-colored silk. The boxes had a faint smell
of musk. The things were so much better for coming in boxes! Mother
knew that.

"Well, we dressed our dolls, and it was a great long sunshiny
forenoon. Mother and Luclarion had done something in the kitchen,
and there was a smell of sweet baking in the house. Every now and
then we sniffed, and looked at each other, and at mother, and
laughed. After dinner we had on our white French calicoes with blue
sprigs, and mother said she should take a little nap, and we might
go into the parlor and be ready for our company. She always let us
receive our own company ourselves at first. And exactly at four
o'clock the door-bell rang, and they began to come.

"Caroline and Fanny Dayton had on white cambric dresses, and green
kid slippers. That was being very much dressed, indeed. Lucy Waldow
wore a pink lawn, and Grace Holridge a buff French print. Susan
Bemys said her little sister couldn't come because they couldn't
find her best shoes. Her mother thought she had thrown them out of
the window.

"When they all got there we began to play 'Lady Fair;' and we had
just got all the 'lady fairs,' one after another, into our ring, and
were dancing and singing up and down and round and round, when the
door opened and mother walked in.

"We always thought our mother was the prettiest of any of the girls'
mothers. She had such bright shining hair, and she put it up with
shell combs into such little curly puffs. An