"For Suzanne will have to coiffe Françoise and Françoise coiffe Suzanne,"
she said. She took from the chest two pasteboard boxes that she said
contained the headdresses belonging to our costumes, and, making me sit
facing my sister, began to dress her hair. I was all eyes. I did not lose
a movement of the comb. She lifted Suzanne's hair to the middle of the
head in two rosettes that she called _riquettes_ and fastened them with a
silver comb. Next, she made in front, or rather on the forehead, with
hairpins, numberless little knots, or whorls, and placed on each side of
the head a plume of white, rose-tipped feathers, and in front, opposite
the riquettes, placed a rose surrounded with silver leaves. Long
rose-colored, silver-frosted ribbons falling far down on the back
completed the headdress, on which Alix dusted handfuls of silver powder.
Can you believe it, my daughter, that was the first time my sister and I
had ever seen artificial flowers? They made very few of them, even in
France, in those days.

While Suzanne admired herself in the mirror I took her place. My headdress
differed from hers in the ends of my feathers being blue, and in the rose
being white, surrounded by pale blue violets and a few silver leaves. And
now a temptation came to all of us. Alix spoke first:

"Now put on your ball-dresses and I will send for our friends. What do you
think?"

"Oh, that would be charming!" cried Suzanne. "Let us hurry!" And while we
dressed, Pat, always prowling about the cottage, was sent to the flatboat
to get his parents and the Carlos, and to M. Gerbeau's to ask my father
and M. and Mme. Gerbeau to come at once to the cottage.... No, I cannot
tell the cries of joy that greeted us. The children did not know us, and