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Show AAKY GRAHAM. BOMNER. THE LOST DRESS Perhaps you will think it strange that a dress can be lost. Perhaps you will think it is impossible impos-sible for a dress to be lost. Of course a dress is worn by a person per-son who can walk and who can move about, but without being worn, a dress Is quite useless. That is, a dress cannot go off walking walk-ing by itself or it can't sit down by Itself with part of it sitting straight up and the other hanging down. It can't go running and it can't play tennis and it can't even dance not by Itself. It hasn't any legs to do these things, nor head with which to plan what might be done in the way of amusement, amuse-ment, nor arms with which to swing itself along. In fact, a dress can't be many things without help. It can be pretty by it self, or It can be ugly by itself. But It can't be seen even if it's pretty pret-ty unless it is worn and shown off. Nor can its ugliness be hidden if it (s worn by some one who insists upon showing it, whether it is ugly or not. Well, the speckled Easter-egg dress was not doing a single thing. The speckled Easter-egg dress was not new this year, nor had it been new last Easter. In fact it was not a new dress at all. Yet it did not look as They Found the Dress. a last year dres will often look a real last year's dress. But it was a pretty dress and it was a pleasant dress, and it had kept its I youthful look even though it was, for ( a dress, quite old. No one thinks a person is old at the age of three or four, or even five. Six is not considered really very old and feeble. But a dress that is six years old Is not considered new. Nor is a dress that is five years old. Nor even four. Nor even three. So that when a dress looks young at ( the age of three it is doing pretty well for itself. This dress looked young. It was a very pretty dress. And its colors, somehow, looked like the colors in a speckled Easter egg. There was yellow yel-low In the dress, and red and brown oh, it was such a pretty speckled dress. Maybe you cannot get an idea of it in this way, but if you think of the prettiest pret-tiest speckled Easter egg you ever saw, you will know that it was something l like this dress. Now, Melly did want to put that dress on, but of course as it was a summer dress, she did not actually need it in the winter. She asked her mother a number of times if she would find the time to do it up for her, for it was mnssy and not quite clean from the autumn before, and it had been put away with some of the old summer things to be fixed up all fresh when the spring came. Her mother was only too willing to do it, tint her mother was very busy, and tills was not one of those things that had to be done. So it was put off. But when the warm weather was approaching, ap-proaching, her mother said : "Now I will fix up your speckled egg dress." I Well, she couldn't find it with the 1 other old things of the previous sum-! sum-! mer, and she looked for it and looked i for it. ! And then. Just when they couldn't Imagine what had happened, they found the dress In a box with some thin clothes that had been put away all freshly laundered and ready for summer. The speckled-egg dress had I been ready all this time in fact It had been ready since the autumn! j But It had kept quiet when the hunt was on: it had not stiid a word In lis box. After all. a lost dress can't say very much until it Is found. |