“Oh! but Aunt Kate!” Nan Sherwood said doubtfully, “this is a great deal of money to spend for a hand bag.”
“I wish ’twas twice as much!” declared the lumberman’s wife, vigorously.
“Twice as much?” Nan gasped.
“Yes. Then the things could be gold trimmed instead of only silver. I want you to have the very nicest bag of any girl going to that big school.”
The awe-struck Nan and the delighted Elizabeth were quite sure that the woman from the Michigan Peninsula had her wish when they walked out of the leather-goods shop, the handsome russet bag firmly clutched by its possessor.
The bag was packed at once, for its purchase was almost the last bit of shopping there was to do before the chums from Tillbury left Chicago. Mrs. Harley rose early in the morning to go with them to the train. She declared that afterward she intended going back to the hotel to “sleep for a week.”
“I’d rather superintend the general fall cleaning at home than get you two girls ready to go to boarding school again,” she sighed.
“I’m sure you’ve been awfully good to me, Mrs. Harley,” said Nan. “My own dear Momsey Sherwood could have treated me no more kindly. And, of course, she couldn’t have shopped for me so well, for she has been too much of an invalid for a long while to take any interest in the shops.”
Mrs. Harley kissed her heartily. “You blessed child!” she declared. “You’re no trouble to suit. Bess is the finicky person.” Her daughter began to pout. “Oh, you are, Miss!” and her mother held up an admonitory finger and shook it at Bess. “Next time I shall buy what I think is proper and leave you at home while I am buying. Why! these children nowadays are more fussy about their frocks, and more insistent upon the style of them, than their mothers. What I shall do, Elizabeth, when your little sisters are old enough to go away to school, I—do—not—see!”
“Oh, by that time,” said Bess, the modern, “I shall be ‘out,’ I hope, and may have really something to say about my own clothes.”