So we were both excited when we heard that a rich widow from a city some distance away had bought it. Soon a group of workmen started on the house and two men commenced to clear up the grounds. I was just four, very interested in anything I could hammer or saw, so was over watching the men almost all my waking hours. Mother had taught me, sometimes pain- fully, to be polite and not to bother persons working, so I got on fine with the workmen who would talk to me and sometimes to my delight let me hold a board or get nails or do something that made me feel of use. The first week end the new owner came to see how work was progressing and of course I was there. With her was a boy my size who seemed very nice. He too had long hair, the first I had seen. I explained I lived next door and we made friends at once. They did not stay long and I went home to tell mother about my new playmate and of course his long hair.

•

In a couple of weeks part of the house was fin- ished and the lady decided to stay over the week end in it, so as to get a better idea of what remained to be done. They arrived Saturday night after I was in bed, but I saw the car and was over Sunday morning almost before breakfast. Instead of Harold, the boy, I saw a girl with her back to me looking at a new flower bed. She had on a pretty white dress with blue sash tied in a big bow behind and hair in two braids with big blue bows too. I asked where Harold was and when she turned around I just stared, for it was Harold. I looked so surprized he asked what was the matter with me. I sort of stammered "I thought you were a girl. What are you doing with a dress on?" "Why I wear dresses a lot. Mother likes me in them and I do too. Don't you ever wear dresses", he asked. I said no never thought that boys wore them except as babies.

Then we went in the house and he told his mother how funny it was that I had never seen a boy in a dress before. She explained that while the old fash- ions had come back and were spreading all over there were still lots of places where they had not been tak- en up. Then she said it was too bad that mother did not put me in dresses as I would look lovely in them and be taken for a pretty girl as Harold often was,

16.