"The only child!
It's lovely!"

"But I'm so lonely except when I'm at school," said Alma sadly.

Dot opened her eyes. She was just slipping her blue frock carefully over
her shining curly head, but she stopped with her head half through to
wonder at Alma.

"Lonely!" she said. "Here! In this house! And you've got your father and
mother!"

Alma shook her head dolefully.

"Father is always busy," she said, "and mother is always out--or
entertaining. Oh, Thea, I would love to have you for my very own sister.
I would give everything I have if I could have you."

Dorothea smiled kindly. Mona Parbury had told her the same--and Minnie
Stevenson, and Nellie Harden. They all wanted her for their _very_ own
sister. It was only such little madcaps as her own sisters, Betty and
Nancy, who were indifferent.

Alma was small and undeveloped. She was seventeen and looked hardly
fifteen. Her large dark eyes looked pathetic in her thin sallow face.
Her lips were thin and colourless, her hair straight and dull brown. No
prettiness at all belonged to her. Only wistfulness and gentleness.

So they went shopping together, the two little girls in blue. And they
had no chaperon at all with them, no schoolmistress, or governess, or
mother, or aunt--no one to direct their eyes where they should look, and
their smiles when they should be given out and when withheld. No one to
carry the purse.

Dot had two shillings and sixpence halfpenny in her small worn purse.
Her mother had slipped the money in. "I can't bear for you to be without
money, Dot dear," she had said, "but try your best not to spend it."

Alma's purse seemed full of half-crowns and shillings and sixpences!

Dot bought herself a new hat-band and a pretty lace-trimmed
handkerchief; and she tried to hide from Alma how very little both had
cost.

Alma made several peculiar mistakes in her purchases. For instance, she
bought just twice as much gold liberty silk as she would need for a
sash, and she had to beg Dot to accept the part that was too much, as
she would be so tired of the thing if she had two _just_ alike. And she
bought a pair of size two evening shoes, and remembered when they were
going home that size two was a size too big for her. She wished she knew
of any one who wore two's. Dot wore three's, didn't she? No?--two's! How
lovely! Then Dot would take the shoes, wouldn't she, and save them from
becoming mouldy! And she bought two pretty lace-trimmed collars, j