“Now this,” Zelda was standing on the wabbly heap of cushions that constituted the platform, “this is my well-known blue chiffon dress. Everybody knows and can testify to its wearing qualities. This dress has appeared at every dance and reception since the opening of the term. It has shown up regularly about four times a week, and has been universally admired.
“Now this dress”—she held it up conscientiously so that the light shone through it and it was seen to be more or less in shreds in certain places, but still presenting a pleasing ensemble, nevertheless.
“There are the marks of honorable service about this dress. It has lots of good times to remember. I was never unhappy in it once, and that’s a boast that any gown might be proud of. Now, girls, I got this in Boston just before I came to college at the beginning of this year, and I went to Hollander’s for it and I paid eighty dollars. I’m tired of the dress now, but there are at least five good more wears out of it. It always looks dear and sweet once it gets on. The price of this dress is four dollars,” she wound up.
There were two ways of auctioning. According to them, you either set your own price and the bidders’ contest simply went on to see which would be the first, or you offered the object after the approved auction custom and the bidders ran up the price as high as it would go.
Zelda had a conscience. Had she not held the gown before the light in that frank fashion, the beauty of the frayed garment might have turned some freshman’s head to the extent of fifteen dollars or more, and it had served its purpose for Zelda—she wanted a few dollars spending money, and getting rid of her old things was a quick method of obtaining it.
When the price of the blue chiffon was named, Lilian Moore nearly fell over on the floor. She had been straining forward across Katherine Foster’s knee, her eyes covetous and hungry.
She had not come expecting to buy anything. She had merely “been dragged along,” as the girls said, and she had hoped to find enough pleasure in watching the others purchase the wonderful second-hands.
But that pleasure was gone now. Suddenly, as she realized that this wonderful, shimmering blue butterfly of a dress was within her reach, she burned with a sudden fire to have it.
For Lilian, who, under the Ambler girls’ teaching, had come to get together a fairly good school-day wardrobe at small cost, had never yet possessed a real evening dress.
She had gone to party after party, reception after reception and dance after dance, always meekly and shamefacedly arrayed in the white simplicity that had been her graduation dress at high school the spring before. Now, staring her in the face with soft blue intensity, was Opportunity, and she meant to seize upon it.