The Hundred Dresses-I
The story is about a quiet and shy girl named Wanda Petronski who was a Polish immigrant and had come to America with her family. She attended the school with America n children who found her name to be weird in the classroom because they all had easier names. She was a poor girl and was always seen wearing a faded blue dress.
Her classmates used to tease her because she claimed to have a hundred dresses “all lined up” in her closet although she was always seen wearing only one. The ones who mostly teased her were her two best friends, Peggy and Maddie. Peggy was the most famous girl in school while anyone barely knew Wanda.
Peggy and Maddie used to wait for Wanda before school even they used to get late. Maddie, a poor girl herself did not like it when Peggy made fun of Wanda. She was afraid that she could be the next.
She wanted Peggy to stop making fun of Wanda, but could not collect the courage to face her as she was afraid that she would lose her best friend.
However, Peggy’s aim was not to hurt Wanda but she was interested to know as to why Wanda had to speak a lie that she had a hundred dresses in her closet.
Truth about the same hundred dresses opened on the result day of the drawing competition. The room was lined with one hundred drawings showing different dresses, each so beautiful. That day, she actually had “a hundred dresses all lined up”, but in the classroom.
At that moment, Peggy and Maddie, who were enthralled realized the theory of a hundred dresses and felt at fault about having treated her badly.
The Hundred Dresses-II
The lesson begins with all the students of Room no. 13 having a look at the superb and amazing drawings of Wanda Petronski.
Only then, a note is received by Miss Mason from Wanda’s father informing that both his children will not attend the school as they are moving to a big city where no one would judge them by their names.
Miss Mason was left stunned and she showed her displeasure to the class. Maddie was affected by this letter of Wanda’s father. She immediately developed a push for apologizing to Wanda. Peggy and Maddie, the two best friends rush to Boggins Heights with a hope that the family had not left the place.
But to their disappointment, there was no one in and around the house. Maddie lost her sleep thinking that she had been a coward as she couldn’t stand up to oppose the wrong. She decided that she’ll never let anyone taunt someone like that again.
That weekend Peggy and Maddie decided to write a letter to Wanda that was initially meant to say sorry but then they ended up writing a just a friendly note asking her how was the new place.
Weeks passed by and there was no reply until one day near Christmas, Miss Mason conveyed that she had got a letter from Wanda. In which she had written that she misses everyone and conveyed her plan of gifting one dress each to Maddie and Peggy because she has a whole new lot of hundred dresses piled up in her new house.
Both of them were happy to accept it and later realized that she had drawn their faces along with the dresses. Thus, both of them understood that Wanda liked them.