your mother
made to order exactly according to your own ideas.

On her right stood a very pretty girl with a dazzling white complexion,
all the whiter for a gold-powder of freckles; black eyes rather deep
set, dimples, and a quantity of curly, bright-red hair wound in a crown
of braids round her head. She was in print, too, but it was blue, and
very becoming.

On the tall woman's left was another girl, also pretty, though in a
florid way, with great blue eyes, a full mouth, and a mouse-coloured
fringe down to her eyebrows. She was more elaborately dressed than the
others, with a lot of coarse lace on her blouse, and a pink skirt. But
she hadn't the look of simple refinement which the first two had in
spite of their plain clothes and rolled-up sleeves. All three waved
something excitedly. One had a huge kitchen spoon, another a book, and
the third a towel.

"Howdy, Cousin Jim!" cried the nice woman with the expression, as Mr.
Brett stopped the car in front of the door. "We're mighty glad to see
you again. This is the young Lady Bulkeley, isn't it? We're mighty glad
to see her, too, and we're going to try to make her as happy as we
can."

"I knew you would, Cousin Fanny, or I wouldn't have brought her to
you," said Mr. Brett, jumping out and helping me down. "But she's Lady
Betty."

"I thought that would be a little too familiar to begin with," said the
dear woman, with a perfectly angelic smile, and a pleasant American
accent with rather more roll of the "r" than I'd heard in the East.
"But you shall be called just what you like best, my dear."

"Shall I? Then I should like you to call me Betty," said I, shaking
hands hard with Mr. Brett's Cousin Fanny, and my heart warming to her
for her own sake as well as his. There was a good smell about her of
linen dried on the grass and of freshly-baked cake. I can never smell
those smells, I know, without remembering her.

She smiled, and pressed my hand. "Why, you are just like an American
girl, my dear," she exclaimed. "Not a bit stiff and English like we
supposed you would be. We all thought we were going to be afraid of
you, but I guess we won't, will we, Patty and Ide?"

I saw that I was expected to take this as an introduction. I smiled and
bowed to the two girls, and when they put out their hands I put mine
out too. They didn't lift my hand up high to shake, as people do at
home a little, and as they do in New York and Newport a great deal
more, but just thumped