She raves over everything, cathedral or ap.r.o.n tr.i.m.m.i.n.g--it's all the same to her."

Polly laughed. "She's rather pretty, I think."

"Too fat."

"No, you can't call her fat; only her bones don't show. I wish Miss Castlevaine could thin up and show her bones just a little, and I do feel sorry for her because she can't curl her hair. She'd look a thousand per cent better with some little fluffs."

"Why don't you be sorry for me?"

"Oh, you don't need curly hair as the rest do!" answered Polly comfortably.

"Need it! I'm a scarecrow with my hair straight!"

Polly took the smooth head between her two palms. "You'll never be a scarecrow if you live to be a hundred and fifty!" she declared.

"But the dear homely ones--it is hard on them. What do you suppose is the reason Miss Sniffen won't let them curl their hair just a mite?"

"Walls are said to have ears," replied Miss Sterling, with a little scornful twist to her pretty mouth. "It wouldn't be safe for me to express my opinion."

Polly smiled. "It's a shame! And it isn't fair when she has curly hair that doesn't need any putting up. I just wish hers would straighten out--straight as Miss Castlevaine's!"

"You seem to have taken a sudden liking to Miss Castlevaine."

"Oh, no! Only I feel sorry for her, she is so fat and fretty, and her hair won't fluff a mite. It must be dreadful to think as much scorn as she does."

"And talk it out," added Miss Sterling. "I wish she wouldn't, for she is really better than she sounds."

"Oh, if she'd try some of Aunt Susie's exercises, perhaps they'd make her face thin!"

"I thought they were to make it plump."

"So they are--and thin, too, in the right places. They'd cure her double chin."

"Anyway, she hasn't any dewlap yet. When it comes it will be an awful one. I can't imagine her in that exercise you tried on me."

"Are you going to do it every day?"

"I would if I had any faith in it." Miss Sterling sighed--with a wrinkled forehead.

"Oh, you mustn't pucker in wrinkles if I'm going to rub them out!"

Polly smoothed the offending lines. "Now I'll run over home and get yon that book Aunt Susie gave to mother. It tells all about everything, and it will make you have faith. It did mother."

"She doesn't need it."

"No; but Aunt Susie said she'd better begin pretty soon, for it was easier to cure wrinkles before they came."

"Yes, I guess it is," Miss Sterling laughed, "and dewlaps too!"

CHAPTER II

IN MISS MAJOR'S ROOM

When Russell Holiday and his wife named their only child June, they planned to make her life one long summer holiday. For eighteen years success went hand in hand with their desire; then an unfortunate marriage plunged the joyous girl into bleak November.

She grew to hate her happy name. But with the pa.s.sing of the man she called husband much of the bitterness vanished, and she began to plan for others.

"I want this Home to be as beautiful as money can make it and as full of joy as a June holiday," she told her approving lawyer.

"There must be no age limit. It shall welcome as freely the woman of forty as her mother or her grandmother. I will gather in the needy of any sect or race,--the oppressed, the disabled, the sorrowful, and the lonely,--and as much as can be give to them the freedom and happiness of a delightful home."

In just one week from the day the ground was broken for the big building, a drunken chauffeur drove the donor and her lawyer to their death, and the inst.i.tution was continued in a totally different way from that intended by the two who could make no protest.

To be sure, it stood at last, in gray granite magnificence, on the crest of Edgewood Hill, a palace without and within; but to those for whom it was built had never come, through the years of its being, a single June holiday.

It was this that some of the residents were discussing, as they crocheted, knitted, or embroidered in Miss Major's room on a dull May morning.

"Too bad June Holiday couldn't have lived just a little longer!"

Mrs. Bonnyman sighed.

"What would she say if she knew how her wishes were ignored!" Miss Castlevaine shook her head.

"Regular prison house!" snapped Mrs. Crump.

"Well, I'm glad to be here if I do have to obey rules," confessed a meek little woman with grayish, sandy hair. "It's a lovely place, and there has to be rules where there's so many."

"There don't have to be hair-crimping rules, Mrs. Prindle--huh!"

As the curly-headed maker of the hated law walked across the lawn.

Miss Castlevaine sent her an annihilating glance.

"Is that Miss Sniffen?" queried Miss Mullaly, adjusting her eyegla.s.ses.

Miss Castlevaine nodded.

The others watched the tall, straight figure, on its way to the vegetable garden.

"She has the expression of a basilisk I saw the picture of the other day." spoke up Mrs. d.i.c.k.

"What kind of an expression was that?" inquired Mrs. Winslow Teed.

"I saw a stuffed basilisk in a London museum when I was abroad, but I can't seem to recollect its expression."

"Look at _her_!" laughed Mrs. d.i.c.k. "She has it to perfection."

Miss Crilly's giggle preceded her words.

"She's like a beanpole with its good clothes on, ain't she? But, then, I think Miss Sniffen is real nice sometimes," she amended.

"So are basilisks and beanpoles--in their proper places," retorted Miss Major; "but they don't belong in the June Holiday Home."