hair.

"Oh, yes, that's all right," she said, replying to a question put by her
mother. "They always powdered their hair in Colonial times."

"It doesn't seem right to me--exactly," objected Mrs. Schofield, gently.
"Sir Lancelot must have been ever so long before Colonial times."

"That doesn't matter," Margaret reassured her. "Nobody'll know the
difference--Mrs. Lora Rewbush least of all. I don't think she knows a
thing about it, though, of course, she does write splendidly and the
words of the pageant are just beautiful. Stand still, Penrod!" (The
author of "Harold Ramorez" had moved convulsively.) "Besides, powdered
hair's always becoming. Look at him. You'd hardly know it was Penrod!"

The pride and admiration with which she pronounced this undeniable truth
might have been thought tactless, but Penrod, not analytical, found his
spirits somewhat elevated. No mirror was in his range of vision and,
though he had submitted to cursory measurements of his person a week
earlier, he had no previous acquaintance with the costume. He began
to form a not unpleasing mental picture of his appearance, something
somewhere between the portraits of George Washington and a vivid memory
of Miss Julia Marlowe at a matinee of "Twelfth Night."

He was additionally cheered by a sword which had been borrowed from a
neighbor, who was a Knight of Pythias. Finally there was a mantle, an
old golf cape of Margaret's. Fluffy polka-dots of white cotton had been
sewed to it generously; also it was ornamented with a large cross of
red flannel, suggested by the picture of a Crusader in a newspaper
advertisement. The mantle was fastened to Penrod's shoulder (that is,
to the shoulder of Mrs. Schofield's ex-bodice) by means of large
safety-pins, and arranged to hang down behind him, touching his heels,
but obscuring nowise the glory of his facade. Then, at last, he was
allowed to step before a mirror.

It was a full-length glass, and the worst immediately happened. It might
have been a little less violent, perhaps, if Penrod's expectations had
not been so richly and poetically idealized; but as things were, the
revolt was volcanic.

Victor Hugo's account of the fight with the devil-fish, in "Toilers
of the Sea," encourages a belief that, had Hugo lived and increased in
power, he might have been equal to a proper recital of the half
hour which followed Penrod's first sight of himself as the Child Sir
Lancelot. But Mr. Wilson himself, dastard but