"

"Oh, I know," Laura hastened to reply, and grew very red. "Queens need
a lot more clothes than I've got."

"Tut, tut!" said Godmother: she did not understand the allusion, which
referred to a former ambition of Laura's. "Don't talk such nonsense to
the child."

She drove very badly, and they went by quiet by-streets to escape the
main traffic: the pony-chaise wobbled at random from one side of the
road to the other, obstacles looming up only just in time for Godmother
to see them. The ponies shook and tossed their heads at the constant
sawing of the bits, and Laura had to be continually ducking, to keep
out of the way of the reins. She let the unfamiliar streets go past her
in a kind of dream; and there was silence for a time, broken only by
Godmother's expostulations with the ponies, till Cousin Grace, growing
tired of playing her bright eyes first on this, then on that, brought
them back to Laura and studied her up and down.

"I say, who on earth trimmed your hat?" she asked almost at once.

"Mother," answered Laura bravely, while the colour mounted to her
cheeks again.

"Well, I guess she made up her mind you shouldn't get lost as long as
you wore it," went on her cousin with disconcerting candour. "It makes
you look just like a great big red double dahlia."

"Let the child be. She looks well enough," threw in Godmother in her
snappish way. But Laura was sure that she, too disapproved; and felt
more than she heard the muttered remark about "Jane always having had a
taste for something gay."

"Oh, I like the colour very much. I chose it myself," said Laura, and
looked straight at the two faces before her. But her lips twitched. She
would have liked to snatch the hat from her head, to throw it in front
of the ponies and hear them trample it under their hoofs. She had never
wanted the scarlet lining of the big, upturned brim; in a dislike to
being conspicuous which was incomprehensible to Mother, she had
implored the latter to "leave it plain". But Mother had said:
"Nonsense!" and "Hold your tongue!" and "I know better,"--with this
result.

Oh yes, she saw well enough how Godmother signed with her eyes to
Cousin Grace to say no more; but she pretended not to notice, and for
the remainder of the drive nobody spoke. They went past long lines of
grey houses, joined one to another and built exactly alike; past large,
fenced-in public parks where all kinds of odd, unfamiliar trees grew,
with branches that ran