"That girl who sits over at the corner table with that stuffy old woman,
acquainted with the Pelhams! Oh, Will, if Agnes could hear you!" cried
Dora, with a shout of laughter.

"Well, I can't see what there is to laugh at," broke in Will, huffily.
"Why shouldn't she and the stuffy old woman, as you call her, know the
Pelhams? She's a nice-looking girl, a first-rate looking girl. What's
the matter with her?"

"Matter? I don't know that anything is the matter, except that she
doesn't look like the sort of girl who would be an acquaintance of the
Pelhams. She doesn't look like their kind, you know. She wears the
plainest sort of dresses,--just little straight up and down frocks of
brown or drab, or those white cambric things,--they are more like
baby-slips than anything; and her hats are just the same,--great flat
all-round hats, not a bit of style to them; and she's a girl of fourteen
or fifteen certainly. Do you suppose people of the Pelhams' kind dress
like that?"

Will gave a gruff little sound half under his breath, as he asked
sarcastically,--

"How do people of the Pelham kind dress?"

"Oh, like Dora and Amy, and especially like Agnes,--in the height of the
fashion, you know," Tilly cried laughingly.

"Now, Tilly," expostulated Dora, "neither Amy nor I overdress. We wear
what all girls of our age--girls who are almost young ladies--wear, and
I'm sure you wear the same kind of things."