skirt not
well hung. The green was of the particular shade which made her look
yellow. As she sat beside Margaret and embroidered assiduously, and
very unskilfully, some daisies on a linen centre-piece, the other
woman eyed her critically.

"You should not wear that shade of green, if you will excuse my
saying so, dear," she remarked presently.

Annie regarded her with a charming, loving smile. She would have
excused her idol for saying anything. "I know it is not very
becoming," she agreed sweetly.

"Becoming," said Margaret a trifle viciously. She was so out of sorts
about her failure to secure Lydia Greenway that she felt a great
relief in attacking little Annie Eustace.

"Becoming," said she. "It actually makes you hideous. That shade is
impossible for you and why,--I trust you will not be offended, you
know it is for your own good, dear,--why do you wear your hair in
that fashion?"

"I am afraid it is not very becoming," said Annie with the meekness
of those who inherit the earth. She did not state that her aunt
Harriet had insisted that she dress her hair in that fashion. Annie
was intensely loyal.

"Nobody," said Margaret, "unless she were as beautiful as Helen of
Troy, should wear her hair that way, and not look a fright."

Annie Eustace blushed, but it was not a distressed blush. When one
has been downtrodden one's whole life, one becomes accustomed to it,
and besides she loved the down-treader.

"Yes," said she. "I looked at myself in my glass just before I came
and I thought I did not look well."

"Hideous," said Margaret.

Annie smiled agreement and looked pretty, despite the fact that her
hair was strained tightly back, showing too much of her intellectual
forehead, and the colour of her gown killed all the pink bloom lights
in her face. Annie Eustace had a beautiful soul and it showed forth
triumphant over all bodily accessories, in her smile.

"You are not doing that embroidery at all well," said Margaret.

Annie laughed. "I know it," she said with a sort of meek amusement.
"I don't think I ever can master long and short stitch."

"Why on earth do you attempt it then?"

"Everybody embroiders," replied Annie. She did not state that her
grandmother had made taking the embroidery a condition of her call
upon her friend.

Margaret continued to regard her. She was finding a species of salve
for her own disappointment in this irritant applied to another. "What
does make you wear that hair r