Page:A Study in Colour - Augusta Zelia Fraser.pdf/48

Rh Creolia, and a stitch in time saves nine a proverb that has never been allowed a chance of proving its own wisdom.

Your black housemaid will buy two or three new dresses, and have as many more in the recesses of her trunk, and yet will appear before you as a mere bundle of rags; and this strange habit gives often a perfectly erroneous aspect of poverty to casual visitors. This was the case with Angelina, for on Sundays she blossomed as the rose, and was gorgeous in pink and yellow calico frocks.

Her head-dress, however, except for church-going, was invariably the same: a picturesque red-checked Madras handkerchief, tied in some mysterious way with a peculiar twist, round her little woolly head.

It suited her very well, but Angelina hated it, although she could not discard it, for she knew too well that her hair could only be termed hair by courtesy. Oh, the hours that she wasted trying to coax it into a couple of stiff little pigtails! But it was very refractory, and at last, with a sigh, she had to return to the red handkerchief, which so kindly hid all its failings; but as to have a "tied head" is tantamount