There was good reason.The Princess looked as if she had accidentally stepped from a frame.She was always lovely and beautifully dressed,but to-night she was prettier and finer than ever before.You could fairly hear their teeth click as some of the most envious of those girls caught sight of her,for she was wearing a new hat!--a black velvet store hat,fitting closely over her crown,with a rim of twisted velvet,a scarlet bird's wing,and a big silver buckle.Her dress was of scarlet cloth cut in forms,and it fitted as if she had been melted and poured into it.It was edged around the throat,wrists,and skirt with narrow bands of fur,and she wore a loose,long,silk-lined coat of the same material,and worst of all,furs--furs such as we had heard wealthy and stylish city ladies were wearing.A golden brown cape that reached to her elbows,with ends falling to the knees,finished in the tails of some animal,and for her hands a muff as big as a nail keg.
Now,there was not a girl in that room,except the Princess,an she had those clothes,who wouldn't have flirted like a peacock,almost bursting with pride;but because the Princess had them,and they didn't,they sat stolid and sullen,and cast glances at each other as if they were saying:"The stuck-up thing!""Thinks she's smart,don't she?"
Many of them should have gone to meet her and made her welcome,for she was not of our district and really their guest.Shelley did go,but I noticed she didn't hurry.
The choosers began at once,and Laddie was the first person called for our side,and the Princess for the visitors'.Every one in the room was chosen on one side or the other;even my name was called,but I only sat still and shook my head,for I very well knew that no one except father would remember to pronounce easy ones for me,and besides I was so bitterly disappointed I could scarcely have stood up.They had put me in a seat near the fire;the spellers lined either wall,and a goodly number that refused to spell occupied the middle seats.I couldn't get a glimpse of Laddie or the home folks,or worst of all,of my idolized Princess.
I never could bear to find a fault with Laddie,but I sadly reflected that he might as well have left me at home,if I were to be buried where I could neither hear nor see a thing.I was just wishing it was summer so I could steal out to the cemetery,and have a good visit with the butterflies that always swarmed around Georgiana Jane Titcomb's grave at the corner of the church.I never knew Georgiana Jane,but her people must have been very fond of her,for her grave was scarlet with geraniums,and pink with roses from earliest spring until frost,and the bright colours attracted swarms of butterflies.I had learned that if I stuck a few blossoms in my hair,rubbed some sweet smelling ones over my hands,and knelt and kept so quiet that I fitted into the landscape,the butterflies would think me a flower too,and alight on my hair,dress,and my hands,even.
God never made anything more beautiful than those butterflies,with their wings of brightly painted velvet down,their bright eyes,their curious antennae,and their queer,tickly feet.
Laddie had promised me a book telling all about every kind there was,the first time he went to a city,so I was wishing I had it,and was among my pet beauties with it,when I discovered him bending over me.
He took my arm,and marching back to his place,helped me to the deep window seat beside him,where with my head on a level,and within a foot of his,I could see everything in the whole room.
I don't know why I ever spent any time pining for the beauties of Georgiana Jane Titcomb's grave,even with its handsome headstone on which was carved a lamb standing on three feet and holding a banner over its shoulder with the fourth,and the geraniums,roses,and the weeping willow that grew over it,thrown in.I might have trusted Laddie.He never had forgotten me;until he did,I should have kept unwavering faith.
Now,I had the best place of any one in the room,and I smoothed my new plaid frock and shook my handmade curls just as near like Shelley as ever I could.But it seems that most of the ointment in this world has a fly in it,like in the Bible,for fine as my location was,I soon knew that I should ask Laddie to put me down,because the window behind me didn't fit its frame,and the night was bitter.Before half an hour I was stiff with cold;but I doubt if I would have given up that location if I had known I would freeze,because this was the most fun I had ever seen.
Miss Amelia began with McGuffey's spelling book,and whenever some poor unfortunate made a bad break the crowd roared with laughter.Peter Justice stood up to spell and before three rounds he was nodding on his feet,so she pronounced "sleepy"to him.Some one nudged Pete and he waked up and spelled it,s-l-e,sle,p-e,pe,and because he really was so sleepy it made every one laugh.James Whittaker spelled compromise with a k,and Isaac Thomas spelled soap,s-o-a-p-e,and it was all the funnier that he couldn't spell it,for from his looks you could tell that he had no acquaintance with it in any shape.Then Miss Amelia gave out "marriage"to the spooniest young man in the district,and "stepfather"to a man who was courting a widow with nine children;and "coquette"to our Shelley,who had been making sheep's eyes at Johnny Myers,so it took her by surprise and she joined the majority,which by that time occupied seats.
There was much laughing and clapping of hands for a time,but when Miss Amelia had let them have their fun and thinned the lines to half a dozen on each side who could really spell,she began business,and pronounced the hardest words she could find in the book,and the spellers caught them up and rattled them off like machines.
