It was a matter of great wonder and amazement to Bill how quickly the children grew up. Up to Annie's death he had regarded them as mere babies. After that they seemed to become young men and women all of a sudden. Two years after their graduation from school the twins were wearing long dresses and putting up their hair; and Lizzie May had a "feller" coming to see her every Sunday. She had known him all her life, but had become friendly with him at a party the winter before. His name was Dan Pooler and his folks lived over near Dry Ridge. He came in a red-wheeled buggy which he had carefully washed down and polished the day before; and he and Lizzie May would drive forth grandly. Lizzie May was very proud of her swain's good looks and store clothes and of the shiny, red-wheeled buggy. When Craw guffawed and spoke of him as "Dam Fooler," and when Judith teased her wickedly about him, she became very indignant and haughty.
Judith, too, was rapidly growing up. She had become such a tall, straight, handsome girl, with such strong, free gestures and such a ringing, careless laugh, that Bill's heart swelled with pride when he saw people turn to look after her on the streets in Clayton. She was learning, too, to smile at the young men, and practising whenever occasion offered the arts of banter and coquetry.
She began to develop an interest in clothes, and brought to the neat, but uninspired dressmaking of the twins a sense of form, color, and picturesqueness.
"You know, Lizzie May, you ought to wear soft, sleazy things an' have 'em nice an' full. Get a blue voile--not a real light blue, but that there new Alice blue. You'll have to send off for it to get the right color. An' make it with the waist crossing in front an' a real full skirt an' a sash tied in a big bow at the back. Then you'd look so nice that Dan Pooler'd jes have to ast you whether he wanted you or not."
"You shet up an' tend yer own business, Judy," Lizzie May answered. Her uncertain relations with Dan were making her somewhat irritable. But she heeded the suggestions about the dress and followed them out as best she could.
"An' I'm a-goin' to have me a new petticoat that won't be like nobody else's petticoat," Judy went on. "I thought it out las' night afore I went to sleep. I'm a-goin' to get some red turkey cotton, real bright, an' have it in points all araound the bottom an' make three black French dots in each point. I bet when you two see it you'll both want one like it."