"No; Miss Winship attracts too much attention."
Alas, it's true! It has become an ordeal for me to venture into a shop. But what a blessed thing if my beauty should bring success and ease to this poor, struggling little widow--just by my wearing a dress she has made! Oh, she'll not be the only one! What if Kitty sometime wins fame by painting my picture, or Cadge by writing of me in her "Recollections?" Why shouldn't I inspire great poems and noble deeds and fine songs, like the famous beauties Miss Coleman told about? Yes, even more than they; there was not one of them all like me!
Next evening when Aunt brought the samples upstairs, I was reading to the Judge in the library, and the others were listening as if stocks and bonds were more fascinating than romances.
"Shall we pray for a second Joshua, arresting the sun, pending deliberation?" asked Uncle, displeased at the interruption.
"Why, Bake, there's scarcely ten days, and how we'd feel if Nelly didn't look well!" cried Aunt Frank; and we all broke out laughing at the bare idea of my looking ill!
"I never saw any one to whom dress mattered so little," Aunt Marcia said, as she folded up her silk knitting. "But Mrs. Edgar insists upon her four fittings like any Shylock haggling for his pound of flesh; it is written in the bond."
When she had trotted away home with her prim elderly maid, like a pair out of "Cranford," Ethel made an impressive announcement:-"The General will pour."
"Returned hero from the Philippines?"
"Oh, dear, no. Meg Van Dam could face Mausers, but a Red Cross bazaar was as near as she got to the war. We call her the General because--oh, you'll find out. Meg is Mrs. Robert Van Dam."
"Oh, I think I've seen that name in the papers. Aren't they grand people?"
"Why, yes; rather; we don't know the Van Dams; Meg's only just married. You might have read about her mother-in-law, Mrs. Marmaduke Van Dam, or her aunt-in-law, Mrs. Henry Van Dam, or Mrs. Henry's daughters; the family's a tribe. But Meg, why, we went to school with Meg; she's just the General."
My dress came home to-night--white and dainty. Ah, at last I've something to wear that's not "good" and "plain" and "durable"! But there was an outcry, as there has been at every fitting, because I won't wear stays. Eccentric, they call me; as if Nature and beauty were abnormal!
When I was arrayed in it, Aunt and Ethel led me to the library for Uncle's inspection.
"Is to-morrow the day set to exhibit to Helen other aspects of New York than the scholastic?" he asked, looking up from his paper. "The first appearances of a young girl in modern society are said to be comparable with a 'Looking Over by the Pack,' as described by Mr. Kipling. May Mrs. Baloo and Mrs. Bagheera and Mrs. Shere Khan have good hunting to-night, and be kind to-morrow to our womanling."