“Hold it up when you walk, but drop it in the house; the sweeping style suits you best, and you must learn to trail your skirts gracefully. You haven’t half buttoned one cuff; do it at once. You’ll never look finished if you are not careful about the little details, for they make up the pleasing whole.”
Jo sighed, and proceeded to burst the buttons off her glove, in doing up her cuff; but at last both were ready, and sailed away, looking as “pretty as picters,” Hannah said, as she hung out of the upper window to watch them.
“Now, Jo dear, the Chesters consider themselves very elegant people, so I want you to put on your best deportment. Don’t make any of your abrupt remarks, or do anything odd, will you? Just be calm, cool, and quiet—that’s safe and ladylike; and you can easily do it for fifteen minutes,” said Amy, as they approached the first place, having borrowed the white parasol and been inspected by Meg, with a baby on each arm.
“Let me see. ‘Calm, cool, and quiet,’—yes, I think I can promise that. I’ve played the part of a prim young lady on the stage, and I’ll try it off. My powers are great, as you shall see; so be easy in your mind, my child.”
Amy looked relieved, but naughty Jo took her at her word; for, during the first call, she sat with every limb gracefully composed, every fold correctly draped, calm as a summer sea, cool as a snowbank, and as silent as a sphinx. In vain Mrs. Chester alluded to her “charming novel,” and the Misses Chester introduced parties, picnics, the opera, and the fashions; each and all were answered by a smile, a bow, and a demure “Yes” or “No,” with the chill on. In vain Amy telegraphed the word “Talk,” tried to draw her out, and administered covert pokes with her foot. Jo sat as if blandly unconscious of it all, with deportment like Maud’s face, “icily regular, splendidly null.”