There came home, in a box, two days after, from Jordan and Marsh's, the loveliest "suit," all made and finished, of brown poplin. To think of Aunt Roderick's getting anything made, at an "establishment"! But Ruth says she put her principles into her unpickable pocket, and just took her porte-monnaie in her hand.
Bracelets and pocket-handkerchiefs have come from New York; all the "girls" here in Westover have given presents of ornaments, or little things to wear; they know there is no housekeeping to provide for. Barbara says her trousseau "flies together"; she just has to sit and look at it.
She has begged that old garnet and white silk, though, at last, from mother. Ruth saw her fold it up and put it, the very first thing, into the bottom of her new trunk. She patted it down gently, and gave it a little stroke, just as she pats and strokes mother herself sometimes.
"All new things are only dreary," she says. "I must have some of the old."
"I should just like to know one thing,—if I might," said Rosamond, deferentially, after we had begun to go to bed one evening. She was sitting in her white night-dress, on the box-sofa, with her shoe in her hand. "I should just like to know what made you behave so beforehand, Barbara?"
"I was in a buzz," said Barbara. "And it was beforehand. I suppose I knew it was coming,—like a thunderstorm."
"You came pretty near securing that it shouldn't come," said Rosamond, "after all."
"I couldn't help that; it wasn't my part of the affair."
"You might have just kept quiet, as you were before," said Rose.
"Wait and see," said Barbara, concisely. "People shouldn't come bringing things in their hands. It's just like going down stairs to get these presents. The very minute I see a corner of one of those white paper parcels, don't I begin to look every way, and say all sorts of things in a hurry? Wouldn't I like to turn my back and run off if I could? Why don't they put them under the sofa, or behind the door, I wonder?"