ce, Rilla, and that way of
fixing your hair is becoming. But you are not going to walk to the
harbour in those slippers, are you?"

"Oh, no. We'll all wear our old shoes to the harbour and carry our
slippers. Do you like my dress, Susan?"

"It minds me of a dress I wore when I was a girl," sighed Cousin Sophia
before Susan could reply. "It was green with pink posies on it, too,
and it was flounced from the waist to the hem. We didn't wear the
skimpy things girls wear nowadays. Ah me, times has changed and not for
the better I'm afraid. I tore a big hole in it that night and someone
spilled a cup of tea all over it. Ruined it completely. But I hope
nothing will happen to your dress. It orter to be a bit longer I'm
thinking--your legs are so terrible long and thin."

"Mrs. Dr. Blythe does not approve of little girls dressing like
grown-up ones," said Susan stiffly, intending merely a snub to Cousin
Sophia. But Rilla felt insulted. A little girl indeed! She whisked out
of the kitchen in high dudgeon. Another time she wouldn't go down to
show herself off to Susan--Susan, who thought nobody was grown up until
she was sixty! And that horrid Cousin Sophia with her digs about
freckles and legs! What business had an old--an old beanpole like that
to talk of anybody else being long and thin? Rilla felt all her
pleasure in herself and her evening clouded and spoiled. The very teeth
of her soul were set on edge and she could have sat down and cried.

But later on her spirits rose again when she found herself one of the
gay crowd bound for the Four Winds light.

The Blythes left Ingleside to the melancholy music of howls from Dog
Monday, who was locked up in the barn lest he make an uninvited guest
at the light. They picked up the Merediths in the village, and others
joined them as they walked down the old harbour road. Mary Vance,
resplendent in blue crepe, with lace overdress, came out of Miss
Cornelia's gate and attached herself to Rilla and Miss Oliver who were
walking together and who did not welcome her over-warmly. Rilla was not
very fond of Mary Vance. She had never forgotten the humiliating day
when Mary had chased her through the village with a dried codfish. Mary
Vance, to tell the truth, was not exactly popular with any of her set.
Still, they enjoyed her society--she had such a biting tongue that it
was stimulating. "Mary Vance is a habit of ours--we can't do without
her even when we are furious with her," Di Blyth