's to see if it is true. But
they are always so busy strutting, I've never been able to catch them
looking at their feet."

She glanced at her own feet as she spoke, then gasped and, covering her
face with her hands, sank limply into a chair in the corner behind her.

"What's the matter?" cried Juliet, alarmed by the sudden change.

"Look! Oh, just _look_!" was the hysterical answer, as she thrust out
both feet, and sat pointing at them tragically, with fingers and thumbs
of both hands outspread.

"No wonder they felt queer. I was so intent on getting my dress pinned
up, and in rushing out in time to play, that I couldn't take time to
analyze my feelings and discover the cause of the queerness. Madeline
blew in at a critical point to borrow a pin, and that threw me off, I
suppose."

From under the white skirt protruded two feet as unlike as could well be
imagined. One was cased in dainty white kid, the other in an old red
felt bedroom slipper, edged with black fur.

"And it would have been all the same," sighed Gay, "if I had been going
to an inaugural ball to hobnob with crowned heads. And I had hoped to
make _such_ a fine impression on the Little Colonel," she added, in a
plaintive tone, with a childlike lifting of the face that Lloyd thought
most charming.

If the mistake had been made by any other girl in the school, it would
not have seemed half so ridiculous, but whatever Gay did was
irresistibly funny. A laughing crowd gathered around her, as she sat
with the red slipper and the white one stretched stiffly out in front of
her, bewailing her fate.

"Anyhow," she remarked, "I'll always have the satisfaction of knowing
that I put my best foot foremost, and if they had been alike I couldn't
have done that. Now could I?" And the girls laughed again, because it
was Gay who said it in her own inimitable way, and because the old felt
slipper looked so ridiculous thrust out from under the dainty white
gown. As others came crowding up to see what was causing so much
merriment in that particular corner, Gay attempted to slip out and go to
her room to correct her mistake. But Sybil Green, pushing through the
outer ring, came up with Allison and Kitty.

"Gay," she began, "here are the girls that you especially wanted to
meet: General Walton's daughters."

Gay's face flushed with pleasure, and, forgetting her errand, she
impulsively stretched out a hand to each, and held them while she
talked.

"Oh, I'm so glad