Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 3.djvu/177

 horses, and furbish up the little carriages in the stable; while another with plump legs put powder on his head and played footman.

Prance and Trip took the hardest parts of all, for they said they would be master and mistress. There was no trouble about clothes, for some fashion-books lay on the table, and these queer little things only had to choose what costume they would have, when, lo and behold! there it was all made and on. Marnie didn't think them half so pretty in the fashionable finery as in their own simple green suits, and she laughed heartily at the funny mistakes they made in getting their furbelows and feathers properly arranged. Poor Prance quite gasped in his little broadcloath suit as he put on a tiny beaver, smoothed his gloves, and shouldered a doll's umbrella, saying so like Marnie's papa that she quite started,—

"Mrs. Prance, I wish to dine at three: don't be behind hand."

"Yes, dear," meekly answered Trip, who had whisked into an elegant morning-dress and cap, and nodded from the window as Mr. Prance went by to his office.