"Just look at yourself in the glass, Priscilla Perkins. You never had anything half so becoming. You look five years younger!"
She did look in the glass. She could have pirouetted around the room in delight. She was in love with her pretty youthful face.
So she bought the hat—at a bargain, of course. She put it away when it came home, and visited it surreptitiously, but somehow never had the courage to confess, or to propose wearing it, though other women of her age indulged in as much and more gayety. In the spring she bought a new silk gown, a gray with a kind of lilac tint, and cut off the breadths to make sure of it.
Mr. Perkins viewed it critically.
"I'm not quite certain, Priscilla, that it is appropriate. And a brown would give you so much more good wear. It looks too—too youthful."
He never remembered there were fifteen years between himself and Priscilla.
"I—I think I would change it."
"Oh," with the best accent of regret she could assume, "I have cut off the breadths and begun to sew them up. It's the spring color. And summer is coming."
"Uu—um——" with a reluctant nod.
She wore it to a christening and a wedding, but the real delight in it had to be smothered. And when her husband proposed she should have it dyed she laid it away.