"That isn't my best hat," returned Doris simply. "Cousin Betty thought the damp of the ocean and running out in the dust would ruin it. It has some beautiful pink roses and ever so much gauzy stuff and a great bow of pink satin. Then I have a pink muslin frock with tiny green and brown sprigs all over it, and a great sash of the muslin that comes down to the hem. The Chapman girls have satin ribbon sashes, but Miss Recompense said she liked the muslin better."
"Do you have to wear just what she says?"
"Oh, no. Madam Royall chooses some things, and Betty. And Cousin King brought me an elegant sash, white, with flowers all over it. I have ever so many pretty things."
"Oh, how proud you must feel!" said the Puritan maid half enviously.
"I don't know"—hesitatingly. "I think I feel just nice, and that is all there is about it. Uncle Win likes what they get for me—men can't buy clothes, you know, and if he is pleased and thinks I look well, that is the end of it."
"Oh, how good it must feel to be happy just like that. But are you quite sure," lowering her voice to a touch of awe, "that you will not be punished in the next world?"
"What for? Doesn't God mean us to be happy?"
"Well—not in this world, perhaps," answered the young theologian. "But you don't have anything in heaven except a white robe, and if you haven't had any pretty things in this world——"
"I wish I could give you some of mine." Doris slipped her soft warm hand over the other, beginning to grow bony and strained already.
"They wouldn't do me any good," was the almost apathetical reply. "I only go to church, and mother wouldn't let me wear them."