Oh, just what everybody wears. The regular thing, I suppose.
Dolly may wear what she has a mind to."
"That is just what you know she cannot, Mr. Copley. At home she might;
but these people here are so very particular."
"About dress? Not at all, my dear. English people let you go your own
way in that as much as any people on the face of the earth. They do not
care how you dress."
"They don't _care_, no," said Mrs. Copley; "they don't care if you went
on your head; but all the same they judge you according to how you look
and what you do. And us especially because we are foreigners. I don't
want them to turn up their noses at Dolly because she is an American."
"I'd as lieve they did it for that as for anything," said Dolly
laughing; "but I hope the people we are going to will know better."
"They _will_ know better, there is no fear," answered her father.
The subject troubled Mrs. Copley's head, however, from that time till
the day of the dinner; and even after Dolly and her father had driven
off and were gone, she still debated with herself uneasily whether a
darker dress would have done better, and whether Dolly ought to have
had flowers in her hair, to make her very best impression upon her
entertainers. For Dolly had elected to wear white, and would deck
herself with no ornament at all, neither ribband nor flower. Mrs.
Copley half grumbled, yet could not but allow to herself that there was
nothing to wish for in the finished effect; and Dolly was allowed to
depart; but as I said, after she was gone, Mrs. Copley went on
troubling herself with doubts on the question.
CHAPTER IX.
THE PEACOCKS.
No doubts troubled Dolly's mind during that drive, about dress or
anything else. Her dress she had forgotten indeed; and the pain of
leaving her mother at home was forced to give way before the multitude
of new and pleasant impressions. That drive was pure enjoyment. The
excitement and novelty of the occasion gave no doubt a spur to Dolly's
spirits and quickened her perceptions; they were all alive, as the
carriage rolled along over the smooth roads. What could be better than
to drive so, on such an evening, through such a country? For the
weather was perfect, the landscape exceedingly rich and fair, the
vegetation in its glory. And the roads themselves were full of the most
varied life, and offered to the little American girl a flashing,
changing, very amusing and abundantly suggestive scene. Dolly's eyes
we
|