such an odd sensation to have four dresses at a time!

They were of simple and inexpensive materials, as was appropriate; but
Mrs. Bird's exquisite taste and feeling for what would suit Polly's
personality made them more attractive than if they had been rich or
expensive.

There was a white China silk, with belt and shoulder-knots of black
velvet; a white Japanese crepe, with purple lilacs strewed over its
surface, and frills of violet ribbon for ornament; a Christmas dress of
soft, white camel's hair, with bands of white-fox fur round the
slightly pointed neck and elbow-sleeves; and, last of all, a Quaker
gown of silver-gray nun's cloth, with a surplice and full undersleeves
of white crepe-lisse.

"I 'm going to be vain, Mrs. Bird!" cried Polly, with compunction in
her voice. "I 've never had a real beautiful, undyed, un-made-over
dress in my whole life, and I shall never have strength of character to
own four at once without being vain!"

This speech was uttered through the crack of the library door, outside
of which Polly stood, gathering courage to walk in and be criticised.

"Think of your aspiring nose, Sapphira!" came from a voice within.

"Oh, are you there too, Edgar?"

"Of course I am, and so is Tom Mills. The news that you are going to
'try on' is all over the neighborhood! If you have cruelly fixed the
age limit so that we can't possibly get in to the performances, we are
going to attend all the dress rehearsals. Oh, ye little fishes! what a
seraphic Sapphira! I wish Tony were here!"

She was pretty, there was no doubt about it, as she turned around like
a revolving wax figure in a show-window, and assumed absurd
fashion-plate attitudes; and pretty chiefly because of the sparkle,
intelligence, sunny temper, and vitality that made her so magnetic.

Nobody could decide which was the loveliest dress, even when she had
appeared in each one twice. In the lilac and white crepe, with a bunch
of dark Parma violets thrust in her corsage, Uncle Jack called her a
poem. Edgar asserted openly that in the Christmas toilet he should
like to have her modeled in wax and put in a glass case on his table;
but Mrs. Bird and Tom Mills voted for the Quaker gray, in which she
made herself inexpressibly demure by braiding her hair in two discreet
braids down her back.

"The dress rehearsal is over. Good-night all!" she said, as she took
her candle. "I will say 'handsome is as handsome does' fifty times
before I