their hair. A pigtail done in three was very unromantic. That
was why, as a sort of compromise, she cut herself a fringe and
began to frizz out the end of her plait. Her father stared at her,
and said she looked like a shop-girl, when first he noticed it,
and Esther told her she was a stupid child; but the looking-glass
and Aldith reassured her.

The next thing was surreptitiously to lengthen her dresses, which
were at the short-long stage. In the privacy of her own bedroom
she took the skirts of two or three of her frocks off the band,
inserted a piece of lining for lengthening purposes, and then
added a frill to the waists of her bodices to hide the join. This
dropped the skirts a good two inches, and made her look quite a
tall, slim figure, as she was well aware.

And none of these things were very harmful.

But Aldith gradually grew dissatisfied with her waist.

"You're at least twenty-three, Marguerite," she said once, quite in
a horrified way. She never called her friend Meg, pronouncing that
name to be "too domestic and altogether unlovely."

Meg glanced from her own waist to her friend's slender, beautiful
one, and sighed profoundly. "What ought I to be?" she said in a
low tone; and Aldith had answered, "Eighteen--or nineteen,
Marguerite, at the most; true symmetrical grace can never he
obtained with a waist twenty-three inches round."

Aldith had not only made statements and comparisons, she had given