The next steamer that touched at the long pier (it was not two hours afterwards) took from there half a dozen hastily written letters to carry north.
"What in the world—why, I hardly knew you," Aunt Katrina said, ten days later, when her niece came over to East Angels to see her; now that Lanse was better, she could come oftener.
"Lanse wished it," Margaret answered as she took her seat.
"And very properly. You certainly had a most tiresome way of having your things made—so deadly plain; it looked as if you wanted people to think you either very Quakerish or very miserable, I never knew which."
"If I had been miserable I shouldn't have paid so much attention to it, should I? It takes a great deal of attention to dress in that way." She spoke, if not smilingly, then at least in the even tone which people now called "always so cheerful."
"Oh, I don't know what you really were, I only meant how you looked. I am glad, at least, that you acknowledge that it takes a great stock of vanity to go against all the fashions. Well, you don't look Quakerish now!"
"You like the dress, then?"
"It's lovely," said Aunt Katrina, scanning every detail from the hat to the shoe. "Expensive, of course?"
"Yes."
"And Lanse likes that?"