"Now then, I can go ahead," thought Kathleen. "What with the finery for
my dear, darling chosen ones, and the badges for all the members, I
shall do."
She was utterly reckless with regard to expense. Her father was rich,
and he did not mind what he spent on his only child. The box seemed to
fill up every crevice of her heart, as she expressed it, and it was a
very happy girl who dressed to go to the Weldons' that evening.
Kathleen was intensely affectionate, and would have done anything in the
world to please Mrs. Tennant; but when it came to wearing a very quiet
gray dress with a little lace round the collar and cuffs, she begun to
demur.
"It can't be done," she thought. "Half of them will be in gray and half
of them in brown, and a few old dowdies will perhaps be in black. But I
must be gay; it isn't fair to Aunt Katie to be anything else."
She made a wild and scarcely judicious selection. She put on crimson
silk stockings, and tucked into her bag a pair of crimson satin shoes.
Her dress consisted of a black velvet skirt over a crimson petticoat,
and her bodice was of crimson silk very much embroidered and with
elbow-sleeves. Round her neck she wore innumerable beads of every
possible color, and twisted through her lovely hair were some more
beads, which shone as the light fell on them. Altogether it was a very
bizarre and fascinating little figure that appeared that evening at the
Weldons' hall door.
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