If
young Lucretia caught cold, it would not be her aunts' fault. She went
along rather clumsily, but quite merrily, holding her tin dinner-pail
very steady. Her aunts had charged her not to swing it, and "get the
dinner in a mess."
Young Lucretia's face, with very pink cheeks, and smooth lines of red
hair over the temples, looked gayly and honestly out of the hood and
nubia. Here and there along the road were sprigs of evergreen and
ground-pine and hemlock. Lucretia glanced a trifle soberly at them. She
was nearly in sight of the school-house when she reached Alma Ford's
house, and Alma came out and joined her. Alma was trim and pretty in her
fur-bordered winter coat and her scarlet hood.
"Hullo, Lucretia!" said Alma.
"Hullo!" responded Lucretia. Then the two little girls trotted on
together: the evergreen sprigs were growing thicker. "Did you go?" asked
Lucretia, looking down at them.
"Yes; we went way up to the cross-roads. They wouldn't let you go, would
they?"
"No," said Lucretia, smiling broadly.
"I think it was _mean_," said Alma.
"They said they didn't approve of it," said Lucretia, in a serious
voice, which seemed like an echo of some one else's.
When they got to the school-house it took her a long time to unroll
herself from her many wrappings. When at last she emerged there was not
another child there who was dressed quite after her fashion.
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