behind them neither. You look real nice, Rilla, and that way of fixing
your hair is becoming. But you are not going to walk to the harbour in
those slippers, are you?"

"Oh, no. We'll all wear our old shoes to the harbour and carry our
slippers. Do you like my dress, Susan?"

"It minds me of a dress I wore when I was a girl," sighed Cousin Sophia
before Susan could reply. "It was green with pink posies on it, too, and
it was flounced from the waist to the hem. We didn't wear the skimpy
things girls wear nowadays. Ah me, times has changed and not for the
better I'm afraid. I tore a big hole in it that night and someone
spilled a cup of tea all over it. Ruined it completely. But I hope
nothing will happen to your dress. It orter to be a bit longer I'm
thinking--your legs are so terrible long and thin."

"Mrs. Dr. Blythe does not approve of little girls dressing like grown-up
ones," said Susan stiffly, intending merely a snub to Cousin Sophia. But
Rilla felt insulted. A little girl indeed! She whisked out of the
kitchen in high dudgeon. Another time she wouldn't go down to show
herself off to Susan--Susan, who thought nobody was grown up until she
was sixty! And that horrid Cousin Sophia with her digs about freckles
and legs! What business had an old--an old beanpole like that to talk
of anybody else being long and thin? Rilla felt all her pleasure in
herself and her evening clouded and spoiled. The very teeth of her soul
were set on edge and she could have sat down and cried.

But later on her spirits rose again when she found herself one of the
gay crowd bound for the Four Winds light.