Later I lifted the dress and saw my plain calfskin shoes. I smiled but soon grew sober as I thought that the incongruity between gown and shoes was no greater than that between the gown and the girl—the girl who was reared to wear plain clothes and be honest and unpretentious. But honesty—that is the rock to which I cling now. I am going to be honest with myself and have my share of happiness while I'm young.
I went back again to the fire, still wearing the borrowed gown. Virginia found me there several hours later. When she came in and saw me, a gorgeous butterfly, she said, she was very happy. She would have me go down to her mother and Royal. I shrank from it but she said I might as well become accustomed to being stared at when I was so dazzling and beautiful. I went down, feeling almost as much of a culprit as I did the day Aunt Maria surprised me at playing prima donna and marched me in to the quilting party.
Mrs. Lee was lovely. She is sure I deserve to be happy in my youth. Royal went mad. "Ye Gods!" he cried as he ran to me and grasped my hands. "You take my breath away! You are like this!" He seized his violin and began to play the Spring Song. The quivering ecstasy of spring, the mating calls of robins and orioles, the rushing joy of bursting blossoms, the delicate perfume of violets and trailing arbutus, the dazzling shafts of sunlight pierced by silver showers of capricious April—all echoed in the melody of the violin.
"You are like that, that is you!" he said as he laid his instrument aside. His words were very sweet to me. The future beckons into sunlit paths of joy.
So I have departed from the teachings of my childhood and turned to the so-called vanities of the world. I am going to grasp my share of happiness while I can enjoy them.
When I went up-stairs again to take off the borrowed gown I was already planning the new clothes I want to buy. I must have a pink crepe georgette, a pale, pale blue—just as I'm writing this there flashes to my mind one of those old Memory Gems I learned in school on the hill.
"But pleasures are like poppies spread,—
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow fall on the river,
A moment white, then melts forever."
I wonder, is there always a fly in the ointment!
