"Rats!" murmured the plump girl, falling back upon Briarwood Hall slang
in her momentary disgust. "Well, anyway, Miss Fielding, what I said is
so. Wonota would like to dress like the best dressed girl in the
theatre, and wear ropes of pearls and a plume in her hat--see that one
yonder! Isn't it superb?"

"The poor birdie that lost it," murmured Ruth.

"I declare, I don't believe you half enjoy yourself thinking of the
reverse of the shield all the time," sniffed Jennie Stone. "And yet you
do manage to dress pretty good yourself."

"One does not have to be bizarre to look well and up-to-date," declared
the girl of the Red Mill. "But that has nothing to do with Wonota."

"I did get off the track, didn't I?" laughed Jennie. "Oh, well! Dress
her up, or any other foreign girl, in American fashion and she seems to
fit into the picture all right--"

"'Foreign girl' and 'American fashion'?" gasped Ruth. "As--as _you_
sometimes say, Jennie, 'how do you get that way'? Wonota is a better
American than we are. Her ancestors did not have to come over in the
_Mayflower_, with Henry Hudson, or with Sir Walter Raleigh."

"Isn't that a fact?" laughed Jennie. "I certainly am forgetting
everything I ever learned at school. And, to tell the truth," she added,
making a little face at her chum, "I feel better for it. I just
_crammed_ at Ardmore and Briarwood."