“They’re good, all of ’em,” she said reassuringly. “He wouldn’t give us bad money to get us into trouble. An’ we never have any real money to spend.”
Still Dil eyed the bill doubtfully.
“An’ flannils, an’ O Dil, couldn’t you buy one new dress? I’d like to have a spandy new one for onct.”
“I s’pose mother wouldn’t know when onct it was washed. An’ I might crumple down the bows on the cap. O Bess, you’d look so sweet! I wisht you’d had a new cap to-day. He said ’twas your money. An’ I was most afear’d it was like thim things Patsey told about, when you raised the han’kercher they wasn’t there!”
“But they’re here.” She laughed with soft exultation. “Le’s go in, Dil. I never went shoppin’ in my life! You could hide the things away from mammy. There’d be no use givin’ it to her. She’s got enough for gin an’ to go to Cunny Island an’ MacBride’s. But jinky! wouldn’t she crack our skulls if she did know it. O Dil, let’s never, never tell.”
“She couldn’t make me tell if she killed me.”
“Le’s go in. Can you carry me?”
She drew the wagon up by the corner of the show-window, and, taking Bess in her arms, entered the store and seated her on a stool, standing so she could brace the weak little back. Of the few dreams that had found lodgment in Dil’s prosaic brain, was this of indulging her motherly, womanly instinct, shopping for Bess. She felt dazed to have it come true. Her face flushed, her breath came irregularly, her heart beat with a delicious, half-guilty pleasure.
There was no one else in the store. A pale, tired, but kindly-looking woman came to wait on her. Dil tried on caps with laces and ribbons, and Bess looked so angelic it broke her heart to take them off. But the plain ones were less likely to betray them. Then they looked at dresses and the coveted “flannils,” and one nice soft petticoat, and oh, some new stockings.
A shrewd little shopper was Dil. She counted up every purchase, and laid aside the sum, really surprised at her bargains and the amount she had left. The attendant was very sympathetic, and inquired what had befallen Bess. Dil said she had been hurted by a bad fall, that her mother was ’most always out to work, and that they hadn’t any father. She was afraid her mother might be washing somewhere, and hear the story, if she was too explicit.