not a word more of this to-day."

"What did keep you two so long?" asked Edith, coming to meet them with a
bright face. If her happy thoughts had not been dwelling on the zebra
cat just presented her by the "knitting-woman," she would have observed
at once that mamma and Kyzie had been "talking secrets"; though she
might not have suspected that this had anything to do with the vacation
school.

"Do hurry along," she added. "I want to show you the funniest sight! I
don't believe you've seen Barbara Hale, have you?"

Edith could hardly speak for laughing; and her mother and Kyzie did not
wonder when they beheld the figure that little Bab had made of herself,
by a new style of dressing her hair. The two little girls were, as I
have told you, as different as possible, but had an intense desire to
look "just alike"; and when they tried their best the result was very
funny.

I will mention here that Lucy "despised" her own hair for not being
straight like Bab's, and had often tried to braid it down her back; but
as the braid always came out and the ribbon came off, the attempt had
been forbidden.

Now, however, as the children had left their city home and come to a
place where everybody was "on holiday," the mammas decided that they
might have a little more liberty.

Their dresses were off the same piece,--good, strong brown ones; their
hats were alike; and, as for their hair, they were allowed to wear it as
they pleased "just for this summer."

"We'll look exactly alike up there in the mountains," the little souls
had said to each other; and this was perhaps one reason why they had
been so overjoyed at the prospect of going.

[Illustration]

But to-day, ah! who would have dreamed that sweet little Bab could
become such a fright? She had done up her hair the night before on as
many as twenty curl-papers. Before starting for the air-castle she had
taken out some of the papers and found--not ringlets, but wisps of
very unruly hair. It would not curl any more than water will run up
hill.

She went to Aunt Lucy in her trouble to seek advice. Aunt Lucy looked
her over with great care and then announced:--

"It is perfectly awful! Don't take out any more papers, Bab. Let 'em be,
so you can have something to stick the curls on to."

And so it was done. The "curls," as Lucy was pleased to call them, were
drawn up and looped and twisted and fastened by hair-pins to the other
curls left in the papers. The effect was mos