re you quite sure that it isn't damp?" she said, "because--you
see--this is my best frock."

"Oh, quite sure," pleaded Lota. "The grass was cut only day before
yesterday, and Jacob rolled the gravel last night. Do come! The children
want to see you so much."

"The children!" said Isabel, surprised. But when she saw the doll-family
sitting in a row with their best clothes on, and their four pairs of
fixed blue eyes looking straight before them, she laughed scornfully.

"Do you play with dolls?" she asked. "I gave them up long ago."

Lady Bird's eyes grew large with distress. "Oh, don't call them _that_,"
she cried. "I never do. It hurts their feelings so. You can't think."

Isabel laughed again. She wasn't at all a nice girl to play with. The
rose-cakes she pronounced "nasty." When Lota explained about Lady Green,
she stared and said it was ridiculous, and that there was no such
person. She turned up her nose at Pocahontas's journal, and declared
that Lota wrote it herself! "Did you ever hear of such a thing?" asked
Lady Bird afterward of Lady Green. "As if my child could not write!" It
was just so all day. The only thing Isabel seemed to enjoy was dining in
state with Grandmamma, and answering all her questions with the air of a
little grown-up woman. Grandmamma said she was a very well-behaved
child, and she wished Charlotte would take pattern by her. But Lota
didn't agree with Grandmamma. She hoped with all her heart that Isabel
would never come to visit her again.

Pocahontas Maria wrote in her journal next day:--

"The lady who came to see Mamma wasn't very nice, I think. She didn't
even speak to us children, and she made fun at my diry. We didn't like
her a bit. Stella says she's horrid, and Ning-Po hopes Mamma won't ever
ask her any more." Lady Bird reproved Pocahontas very gravely for these
sentiments, and reminded her again that "diry" is not the way to spell
diary; but she said to Lady Green, who dropped in for a call, "Poor
little thing, I don't wonder! children always find out when people isn't
nice; and Isabel, she _was_ very disagreeable, you know, calling them
'dolls' and things like that! It's not surprising that they didn't like
her, I'm sure."

Saturday was an eventful day. There were no lessons to do for one thing,
because Nursey's daughter had come to see her, and Grandmamma said Lady
Bird might be excused for once. This gave her the whole morning to
attend to domestic matters, which was nice,