the prettiest of all. A
great net of golden-brown silk that Leslie had begged Mrs. Linceford,
who liked netting, to make, gathered into strong, large meshes the
unruly wealth of hair brushed back in rippling lines from Prissy's
temples, and showing so its brighter, natural color from underneath,
where the outside had grown sun-faded.

"I'm just like Cinderella,--with four godmothers!" cried the child; and
she danced up and down, as Leslie let her go from under her hands.

"You're just like--a little heathen!" screamed Aunt Hoskins. "Where's
yer thanks?" Her own thanks spoke themselves, partly in an hysterical
sort of chuckle and sniffle, that stopped each other short, and the
rebuke with them. "But there! she don't know no better! 'T ain't fer
every day, you needn't think. It's for company to-day, an' fer Sundays,
an' to go to Portsmouth."

"Don't spoil it for her, Miss Hoskins. Children hate to think it isn't
for every day," said Leslie Goldthwaite.

But the child-antidote to that was also ready.

"I don't care," cried Prissy. "To-day's a great, long day, and Sunday's
for ever and ever, and Portsmouth'll be always."

"_Can't_ yer stop ter kerchy, and say--Lud-o'-light 'n' massy, I donno
what to _tell_ ye ter say!" And Miss Hoskins sniffled and gurgled again,
and gave it up.

"She has thanked us, I think," said Miss Craydocke, in her simple way,
"when she called us Godmothers!" The word came home to her good heart.
God had given her, the lonely woman, the larger motherhood. "Brothers,
and sisters, and mothers!" She thought how Christ traced out the
relationships, and claimed them even to himself!

"Now, for once, _you_'re to be done up. That's general order number
two," Miss Craydocke said to the Josselyn girls, as they all first met
together again after the Cliff party. "We've worked together till we're
friends. And so there's not a word to be said. We owe you time that
we've taken, and more that we mean to take before you go. I'll tell you
what for, when it's necessary."

It was a nicer matter to get the Josselyns to be helped than to help. It
was not easy for them to bring forth their breadths and their linings,
and their braids that were to be pieced, and their trimmings that
were to be turned, and to lay bare to other eyes all their little
economies of contrivance; but Miss Craydocke managed it by simple
straightforwardness,--by not behaving as if there were anything to be
glossed over or ignored. Inste