's pretty--that is, it's a pretty colour; but I was looking to see
about how many yards there was in it, for the girls aren't wearing
Alsatian bows, as you call them, this year. They seem to be wearing their
hair mostly in two plain braids. I'm glad of it, for you look ever so much
better with your hair done that way. We can rip it up and press the
ribbon. I'm awfully glad you've got such a lot; It'll make lovely bows for
the braids."

While Elizabeth ripped her bow to pieces Aunt Susan's tongue ran on with
the subject nearest her heart.

"To-morrow morning I'm going to have you sit by that window and watch the
girls that go past about school time. You'll learn more this month doing
that than you would in school, I expect. It's just as well you can't start
till next term, since you didn't get here at first."

"Next term!" her new dresses with their long basques--long basques were
more talked of than any other feature of dress that year, not by Elizabeth
alone but all womankind--had seemed so magnificent that she could not
think of it being necessary to take a whole month to make them over.

"Yes, not till after Christmas. You can't start in at the middle of a term
in high school like you can in the country. We'll get you a wrap made
before that time. I told your father I couldn't think of your going
without a coat of some sort. He didn't feel that he could afford a coat,
so I'm going to get the cloth and you and I will make you a circular this
week."

"A circular? What's that?"

Aunt Susan explained the new kind of cape which came down to the bottom of
the dress and had a hood lined with bright coloured silk and was puckered
with rubber to make it fit the face.

It took all day to finish the basque, and the next morning Elizabeth
watched the well-dressed city girls loiter past, and was glad that she
could have a month to get ready to meet them in the schoolroom. She had
never known anybody dressed so well for anything but a funeral, or a
party, or to go to church. They actually wore gloves to school! Elizabeth
looked at her brown hands and decided that she would wear her mittens to
bed till her hands sweated themselves to a proper degree of whiteness, and
Susan Hornby let her look on, and weigh, and exclaim. Thus was Elizabeth
Farnshaw's education begun.

The afternoon was spent selecting the goods for the new cape, and
wandering about the great stores and the streets; a new pair of pretty
gray gloves were obta